remarkable-linux/Documentation/block/queue-sysfs.txt
Tejun Heo a051661ca6 blkcg: implement per-blkg request allocation
Currently, request_queue has one request_list to allocate requests
from regardless of blkcg of the IO being issued.  When the unified
request pool is used up, cfq proportional IO limits become meaningless
- whoever grabs the next request being freed wins the race regardless
of the configured weights.

This can be easily demonstrated by creating a blkio cgroup w/ very low
weight, put a program which can issue a lot of random direct IOs there
and running a sequential IO from a different cgroup.  As soon as the
request pool is used up, the sequential IO bandwidth crashes.

This patch implements per-blkg request_list.  Each blkg has its own
request_list and any IO allocates its request from the matching blkg
making blkcgs completely isolated in terms of request allocation.

* Root blkcg uses the request_list embedded in each request_queue,
  which was renamed to @q->root_rl from @q->rq.  While making blkcg rl
  handling a bit harier, this enables avoiding most overhead for root
  blkcg.

* Queue fullness is properly per request_list but bdi isn't blkcg
  aware yet, so congestion state currently just follows the root
  blkcg.  As writeback isn't aware of blkcg yet, this works okay for
  async congestion but readahead may get the wrong signals.  It's
  better than blkcg completely collapsing with shared request_list but
  needs to be improved with future changes.

* After this change, each block cgroup gets a full request pool making
  resource consumption of each cgroup higher.  This makes allowing
  non-root users to create cgroups less desirable; however, note that
  allowing non-root users to directly manage cgroups is already
  severely broken regardless of this patch - each block cgroup
  consumes kernel memory and skews IO weight (IO weights are not
  hierarchical).

v2: queue-sysfs.txt updated and patch description udpated as suggested
    by Vivek.

v3: blk_get_rl() wasn't checking error return from
    blkg_lookup_create() and may cause oops on lookup failure.  Fix it
    by falling back to root_rl on blkg lookup failures.  This problem
    was spotted by Rakesh Iyer <rni@google.com>.

v4: Updated to accomodate 458f27a982 "block: Avoid missed wakeup in
    request waitqueue".  blk_drain_queue() now wakes up waiters on all
    blkg->rl on the target queue.

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
2012-06-26 18:42:49 -04:00

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Queue sysfs files
=================
This text file will detail the queue files that are located in the sysfs tree
for each block device. Note that stacked devices typically do not export
any settings, since their queue merely functions are a remapping target.
These files are the ones found in the /sys/block/xxx/queue/ directory.
Files denoted with a RO postfix are readonly and the RW postfix means
read-write.
hw_sector_size (RO)
-------------------
This is the hardware sector size of the device, in bytes.
max_hw_sectors_kb (RO)
----------------------
This is the maximum number of kilobytes supported in a single data transfer.
max_sectors_kb (RW)
-------------------
This is the maximum number of kilobytes that the block layer will allow
for a filesystem request. Must be smaller than or equal to the maximum
size allowed by the hardware.
nomerges (RW)
-------------
This enables the user to disable the lookup logic involved with IO
merging requests in the block layer. By default (0) all merges are
enabled. When set to 1 only simple one-hit merges will be tried. When
set to 2 no merge algorithms will be tried (including one-hit or more
complex tree/hash lookups).
nr_requests (RW)
----------------
This controls how many requests may be allocated in the block layer for
read or write requests. Note that the total allocated number may be twice
this amount, since it applies only to reads or writes (not the accumulated
sum).
To avoid priority inversion through request starvation, a request
queue maintains a separate request pool per each cgroup when
CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP is enabled, and this parameter applies to each such
per-block-cgroup request pool. IOW, if there are N block cgroups,
each request queue may have upto N request pools, each independently
regulated by nr_requests.
read_ahead_kb (RW)
------------------
Maximum number of kilobytes to read-ahead for filesystems on this block
device.
rq_affinity (RW)
----------------
If this option is '1', the block layer will migrate request completions to the
cpu "group" that originally submitted the request. For some workloads this
provides a significant reduction in CPU cycles due to caching effects.
For storage configurations that need to maximize distribution of completion
processing setting this option to '2' forces the completion to run on the
requesting cpu (bypassing the "group" aggregation logic).
scheduler (RW)
--------------
When read, this file will display the current and available IO schedulers
for this block device. The currently active IO scheduler will be enclosed
in [] brackets. Writing an IO scheduler name to this file will switch
control of this block device to that new IO scheduler. Note that writing
an IO scheduler name to this file will attempt to load that IO scheduler
module, if it isn't already present in the system.
Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>, February 2009