[PATCH] use the congestion APIs in pdflush

The key concept here is that pdflush does not block on request queues
any more.  Instead, it circulates across the queues, keeping any
non-congested queues full of write data.  When all queues are full,
pdflush takes a nap, to be woken when *any* queue exits write
congestion.

This code can keep sixty spindles saturated - we've never been able to
do that before.

 - Add the `nonblocking' flag to struct writeback_control, and teach
   the writeback paths to honour it.

 - Add the `encountered_congestion' flag to struct writeback_control
   and teach the writeback paths to set it.

So as soon as a mapping's backing_dev_info indicates that it is getting
congested, bale out of writeback.  And don't even start writeback
against filesystems whose queues are congested.

 - Convert pdflush's background_writeback() function to use
   nonblocking writeback.

This way, a single pdflush thread will circulate around all the
dirty queues, keeping them filled.

 - Convert the pdlfush `kupdate' function to do the same thing.

This solves the problem of pdflush thread pool exhaustion.

It solves the problem of pdflush startup latency.

It solves the (minor) problem wherein `kupdate' writeback only writes
back a single disk at a time (it was getting blocked on each queue in
turn).

It probably means that we only ever need a single pdflush thread.

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions