diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'mm/page-writeback.c')
| -rw-r--r-- | mm/page-writeback.c | 16 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c index 71252486bc6..155efca4c12 100644 --- a/mm/page-writeback.c +++ b/mm/page-writeback.c @@ -411,8 +411,13 @@ void global_dirty_limits(unsigned long *pbackground, unsigned long *pdirty) * * Returns @bdi's dirty limit in pages. The term "dirty" in the context of * dirty balancing includes all PG_dirty, PG_writeback and NFS unstable pages. - * And the "limit" in the name is not seriously taken as hard limit in - * balance_dirty_pages(). + * + * Note that balance_dirty_pages() will only seriously take it as a hard limit + * when sleeping max_pause per page is not enough to keep the dirty pages under + * control. For example, when the device is completely stalled due to some error + * conditions, or when there are 1000 dd tasks writing to a slow 10MB/s USB key. + * In the other normal situations, it acts more gently by throttling the tasks + * more (rather than completely block them) when the bdi dirty pages go high. * * It allocates high/low dirty limits to fast/slow devices, in order to prevent * - starving fast devices @@ -594,6 +599,13 @@ static unsigned long bdi_position_ratio(struct backing_dev_info *bdi, */ if (unlikely(bdi_thresh > thresh)) bdi_thresh = thresh; + /* + * It's very possible that bdi_thresh is close to 0 not because the + * device is slow, but that it has remained inactive for long time. + * Honour such devices a reasonable good (hopefully IO efficient) + * threshold, so that the occasional writes won't be blocked and active + * writes can rampup the threshold quickly. + */ bdi_thresh = max(bdi_thresh, (limit - dirty) / 8); /* * scale global setpoint to bdi's: |