fs/sync.c: make sync_file_range(2) use WB_SYNC_NONE writeback
authorJan Kara <jack@suse.com>
Sat, 7 Nov 2015 00:28:55 +0000 (16:28 -0800)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Sat, 7 Nov 2015 01:50:42 +0000 (17:50 -0800)
commit23d0127096cb91cb6d354bdc71bd88a7bae3a1d5
tree17f1805013265e075c817cdfd8f688799eba100f
parentd6669d689f397137381fe6729293e0eba1ef09a8
fs/sync.c: make sync_file_range(2) use WB_SYNC_NONE writeback

sync_file_range(2) is documented to issue writeback only for pages that
are not currently being written.  After all the system call has been
created for userspace to be able to issue background writeout and so
waiting for in-flight IO is undesirable there.  However commit
ee53a891f474 ("mm: do_sync_mapping_range integrity fix") switched
do_sync_mapping_range() and thus sync_file_range() to issue writeback in
WB_SYNC_ALL mode since do_sync_mapping_range() was used by other code
relying on WB_SYNC_ALL semantics.

These days do_sync_mapping_range() went away and we can switch
sync_file_range(2) back to issuing WB_SYNC_NONE writeback.  That should
help PostgreSQL avoid large latency spikes when flushing data in the
background.

Andres measured a 20% increase in transactions per second on an SSD disk.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
Reported-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Tested-By: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
fs/sync.c