tree b873a9d4cfebef580ac95f1b00ae9ebe101f4add
parent 1b3922a8bc74231f9a767d1be6d9a061a4d4eeab
author David Sterba <dsterba@suse.com> 1547042543 +0100
committer David Sterba <dsterba@suse.com> 1547827795 +0100

Revert "btrfs: balance dirty metadata pages in btrfs_finish_ordered_io"

This reverts commit e73e81b6d0114d4a303205a952ab2e87c44bd279.

This patch causes a few problems:

- adds latency to btrfs_finish_ordered_io
- as btrfs_finish_ordered_io is used for free space cache, generating
  more work from btrfs_btree_balance_dirty_nodelay could end up in the
  same workque, effectively deadlocking

12260 kworker/u96:16+btrfs-freespace-write D
[<0>] balance_dirty_pages+0x6e6/0x7ad
[<0>] balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited+0x6bb/0xa90
[<0>] btrfs_finish_ordered_io+0x3da/0x770
[<0>] normal_work_helper+0x1c5/0x5a0
[<0>] process_one_work+0x1ee/0x5a0
[<0>] worker_thread+0x46/0x3d0
[<0>] kthread+0xf5/0x130
[<0>] ret_from_fork+0x24/0x30
[<0>] 0xffffffffffffffff

Transaction commit will wait on the freespace cache:

838 btrfs-transacti D
[<0>] btrfs_start_ordered_extent+0x154/0x1e0
[<0>] btrfs_wait_ordered_range+0xbd/0x110
[<0>] __btrfs_wait_cache_io+0x49/0x1a0
[<0>] btrfs_write_dirty_block_groups+0x10b/0x3b0
[<0>] commit_cowonly_roots+0x215/0x2b0
[<0>] btrfs_commit_transaction+0x37e/0x910
[<0>] transaction_kthread+0x14d/0x180
[<0>] kthread+0xf5/0x130
[<0>] ret_from_fork+0x24/0x30
[<0>] 0xffffffffffffffff

And then writepages ends up waiting on transaction commit:

9520 kworker/u96:13+flush-btrfs-1 D
[<0>] wait_current_trans+0xac/0xe0
[<0>] start_transaction+0x21b/0x4b0
[<0>] cow_file_range_inline+0x10b/0x6b0
[<0>] cow_file_range.isra.69+0x329/0x4a0
[<0>] run_delalloc_range+0x105/0x3c0
[<0>] writepage_delalloc+0x119/0x180
[<0>] __extent_writepage+0x10c/0x390
[<0>] extent_write_cache_pages+0x26f/0x3d0
[<0>] extent_writepages+0x4f/0x80
[<0>] do_writepages+0x17/0x60
[<0>] __writeback_single_inode+0x59/0x690
[<0>] writeback_sb_inodes+0x291/0x4e0
[<0>] __writeback_inodes_wb+0x87/0xb0
[<0>] wb_writeback+0x3bb/0x500
[<0>] wb_workfn+0x40d/0x610
[<0>] process_one_work+0x1ee/0x5a0
[<0>] worker_thread+0x1e0/0x3d0
[<0>] kthread+0xf5/0x130
[<0>] ret_from_fork+0x24/0x30
[<0>] 0xffffffffffffffff

Eventually, we have every process in the system waiting on
balance_dirty_pages(), and nobody is able to make progress on page
writeback.

The original patch tried to fix an OOM condition, that happened on 4.4 but no
success reproducing that on later kernels (4.19 and 4.20). This is more likely
a problem in OOM itself.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/20180528054821.9092-1-ethanlien@synology.com/
Reported-by: Chris Mason <clm@fb.com>
CC: stable@vger.kernel.org # 4.18+
CC: ethanlien <ethanlien@synology.com>
Signed-off-by: David Sterba <dsterba@suse.com>