Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:45:14 -0400
From:      Ben Kelly <ben@wanderview.com>
To:        Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@freebsd.org>
Cc:        svn-src-head@freebsd.org, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r206665 - head/sys/geom/eli
Message-ID:  <0168690D-7294-48FE-8223-1E3343CCC802@wanderview.com>
In-Reply-To: <201004151634.o3FGY7wX053198@svn.freebsd.org>
References:  <201004151634.o3FGY7wX053198@svn.freebsd.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Apr 15, 2010, at 12:34 PM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> Author: pjd
> Date: Thu Apr 15 16:34:06 2010
> New Revision: 206665
> URL: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/206665
>=20
> Log:
>  Use lower priority for GELI worker threads. This improves system
>  responsiveness under heavy GELI load.

Sorry to reply to such an old commit, but I wanted to note that this =
causes a regression on my server.  It is probably fairly specific to my =
setup, so it may not make sense to fix, but I thought I should at least =
let you know.

My server is an old i386 with a zfs pool on top of a geli partition.  =
When under heavy disk load the zfs subsystem can enter a message passing =
loop between the txg and zio threads until any queued disk i/o is =
flushed.  With the geli worker threads at a lower priority this can lead =
to livelock since geli never gets scheduled to perform the flush.  =46rom =
my previous debugging efforts I believe this can only be triggered if =
the ARC is under heavy pressure and the processor is near, or at, 100% =
CPU utilization.

Here is the old thread on this issue:

  =
http://old.nabble.com/-patch--zfs-livelock-and-thread-priorities-td2258702=
2.html

On my local system I have simply reverted this change and bumped up the =
priority on the geli worker threads to PVM to match the priority used by =
the zio threads.  Before doing this I could reliably trigger the =
livelock by running my backup process.

Anyway, its not clear to me what a good general purpose solution would =
be.  I just wanted to note the issue in case anyone else encounters it.

Thanks.

- Ben=



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?0168690D-7294-48FE-8223-1E3343CCC802>