summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.rst253
1 files changed, 253 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..d14f230f0b12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-glocks.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,253 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+============================
+Glock internal locking rules
+============================
+
+This documents the basic principles of the glock state machine
+internals. Each glock (struct gfs2_glock in fs/gfs2/incore.h)
+has two main (internal) locks:
+
+ 1. A spinlock (gl_lockref.lock) which protects the internal state such
+ as gl_state, gl_target and the list of holders (gl_holders)
+ 2. A non-blocking bit lock, GLF_LOCK, which is used to prevent other
+ threads from making calls to the DLM, etc. at the same time. If a
+ thread takes this lock, it must then call run_queue (usually via the
+ workqueue) when it releases it in order to ensure any pending tasks
+ are completed.
+
+The gl_holders list contains all the queued lock requests (not
+just the holders) associated with the glock. If there are any
+held locks, then they will be contiguous entries at the head
+of the list. Locks are granted in strictly the order that they
+are queued, except for those marked LM_FLAG_PRIORITY which are
+used only during recovery, and even then only for journal locks.
+
+There are three lock states that users of the glock layer can request,
+namely shared (SH), deferred (DF) and exclusive (EX). Those translate
+to the following DLM lock modes:
+
+========== ====== =====================================================
+Glock mode DLM lock mode
+========== ====== =====================================================
+ UN IV/NL Unlocked (no DLM lock associated with glock) or NL
+ SH PR (Protected read)
+ DF CW (Concurrent write)
+ EX EX (Exclusive)
+========== ====== =====================================================
+
+Thus DF is basically a shared mode which is incompatible with the "normal"
+shared lock mode, SH. In GFS2 the DF mode is used exclusively for direct I/O
+operations. The glocks are basically a lock plus some routines which deal
+with cache management. The following rules apply for the cache:
+
+========== ========== ============== ========== ==============
+Glock mode Cache data Cache Metadata Dirty Data Dirty Metadata
+========== ========== ============== ========== ==============
+ UN No No No No
+ SH Yes Yes No No
+ DF No Yes No No
+ EX Yes Yes Yes Yes
+========== ========== ============== ========== ==============
+
+These rules are implemented using the various glock operations which
+are defined for each type of glock. Not all types of glocks use
+all the modes. Only inode glocks use the DF mode for example.
+
+Table of glock operations and per type constants:
+
+============= =============================================================
+Field Purpose
+============= =============================================================
+go_xmote_th Called before remote state change (e.g. to sync dirty data)
+go_xmote_bh Called after remote state change (e.g. to refill cache)
+go_inval Called if remote state change requires invalidating the cache
+go_demote_ok Returns boolean value of whether its ok to demote a glock
+ (e.g. checks timeout, and that there is no cached data)
+go_lock Called for the first local holder of a lock
+go_unlock Called on the final local unlock of a lock
+go_dump Called to print content of object for debugfs file, or on
+ error to dump glock to the log.
+go_type The type of the glock, ``LM_TYPE_*``
+go_callback Called if the DLM sends a callback to drop this lock
+go_flags GLOF_ASPACE is set, if the glock has an address space
+ associated with it
+============= =============================================================
+
+The minimum hold time for each lock is the time after a remote lock
+grant for which we ignore remote demote requests. This is in order to
+prevent a situation where locks are being bounced around the cluster
+from node to node with none of the nodes making any progress. This
+tends to show up most with shared mmaped files which are being written
+to by multiple nodes. By delaying the demotion in response to a
+remote callback, that gives the userspace program time to make
+some progress before the pages are unmapped.
+
+There is a plan to try and remove the go_lock and go_unlock callbacks
+if possible, in order to try and speed up the fast path though the locking.
+Also, eventually we hope to make the glock "EX" mode locally shared
+such that any local locking will be done with the i_mutex as required
+rather than via the glock.
+
+Locking rules for glock operations:
+
+============= ====================== =============================
+Operation GLF_LOCK bit lock held gl_lockref.lock spinlock held
+============= ====================== =============================
+go_xmote_th Yes No
+go_xmote_bh Yes No
+go_inval Yes No
+go_demote_ok Sometimes Yes
+go_lock Yes No
+go_unlock Yes No
+go_dump Sometimes Yes
+go_callback Sometimes (N/A) Yes
+============= ====================== =============================
+
+.. Note::
+
+ Operations must not drop either the bit lock or the spinlock
+ if its held on entry. go_dump and do_demote_ok must never block.
+ Note that go_dump will only be called if the glock's state
+ indicates that it is caching uptodate data.
+
+Glock locking order within GFS2:
+
+ 1. i_rwsem (if required)
+ 2. Rename glock (for rename only)
+ 3. Inode glock(s)
+ (Parents before children, inodes at "same level" with same parent in
+ lock number order)
+ 4. Rgrp glock(s) (for (de)allocation operations)
+ 5. Transaction glock (via gfs2_trans_begin) for non-read operations
+ 6. i_rw_mutex (if required)
+ 7. Page lock (always last, very important!)
+
+There are two glocks per inode. One deals with access to the inode
+itself (locking order as above), and the other, known as the iopen
+glock is used in conjunction with the i_nlink field in the inode to
+determine the lifetime of the inode in question. Locking of inodes
+is on a per-inode basis. Locking of rgrps is on a per rgrp basis.
+In general we prefer to lock local locks prior to cluster locks.
+
+Glock Statistics
+----------------
+
+The stats are divided into two sets: those relating to the
+super block and those relating to an individual glock. The
+super block stats are done on a per cpu basis in order to
+try and reduce the overhead of gathering them. They are also
+further divided by glock type. All timings are in nanoseconds.
+
+In the case of both the super block and glock statistics,
+the same information is gathered in each case. The super
+block timing statistics are used to provide default values for
+the glock timing statistics, so that newly created glocks
+should have, as far as possible, a sensible starting point.
+The per-glock counters are initialised to zero when the
+glock is created. The per-glock statistics are lost when
+the glock is ejected from memory.
+
+The statistics are divided into three pairs of mean and
+variance, plus two counters. The mean/variance pairs are
+smoothed exponential estimates and the algorithm used is
+one which will be very familiar to those used to calculation
+of round trip times in network code. See "TCP/IP Illustrated,
+Volume 1", W. Richard Stevens, sect 21.3, "Round-Trip Time Measurement",
+p. 299 and onwards. Also, Volume 2, Sect. 25.10, p. 838 and onwards.
+Unlike the TCP/IP Illustrated case, the mean and variance are
+not scaled, but are in units of integer nanoseconds.
+
+The three pairs of mean/variance measure the following
+things:
+
+ 1. DLM lock time (non-blocking requests)
+ 2. DLM lock time (blocking requests)
+ 3. Inter-request time (again to the DLM)
+
+A non-blocking request is one which will complete right
+away, whatever the state of the DLM lock in question. That
+currently means any requests when (a) the current state of
+the lock is exclusive, i.e. a lock demotion (b) the requested
+state is either null or unlocked (again, a demotion) or (c) the
+"try lock" flag is set. A blocking request covers all the other
+lock requests.
+
+There are two counters. The first is there primarily to show
+how many lock requests have been made, and thus how much data
+has gone into the mean/variance calculations. The other counter
+is counting queuing of holders at the top layer of the glock
+code. Hopefully that number will be a lot larger than the number
+of dlm lock requests issued.
+
+So why gather these statistics? There are several reasons
+we'd like to get a better idea of these timings:
+
+1. To be able to better set the glock "min hold time"
+2. To spot performance issues more easily
+3. To improve the algorithm for selecting resource groups for
+ allocation (to base it on lock wait time, rather than blindly
+ using a "try lock")
+
+Due to the smoothing action of the updates, a step change in
+some input quantity being sampled will only fully be taken
+into account after 8 samples (or 4 for the variance) and this
+needs to be carefully considered when interpreting the
+results.
+
+Knowing both the time it takes a lock request to complete and
+the average time between lock requests for a glock means we
+can compute the total percentage of the time for which the
+node is able to use a glock vs. time that the rest of the
+cluster has its share. That will be very useful when setting
+the lock min hold time.
+
+Great care has been taken to ensure that we
+measure exactly the quantities that we want, as accurately
+as possible. There are always inaccuracies in any
+measuring system, but I hope this is as accurate as we
+can reasonably make it.
+
+Per sb stats can be found here::
+
+ /sys/kernel/debug/gfs2/<fsname>/sbstats
+
+Per glock stats can be found here::
+
+ /sys/kernel/debug/gfs2/<fsname>/glstats
+
+Assuming that debugfs is mounted on /sys/kernel/debug and also
+that <fsname> is replaced with the name of the gfs2 filesystem
+in question.
+
+The abbreviations used in the output as are follows:
+
+========= ================================================================
+srtt Smoothed round trip time for non blocking dlm requests
+srttvar Variance estimate for srtt
+srttb Smoothed round trip time for (potentially) blocking dlm requests
+srttvarb Variance estimate for srttb
+sirt Smoothed inter request time (for dlm requests)
+sirtvar Variance estimate for sirt
+dlm Number of dlm requests made (dcnt in glstats file)
+queue Number of glock requests queued (qcnt in glstats file)
+========= ================================================================
+
+The sbstats file contains a set of these stats for each glock type (so 8 lines
+for each type) and for each cpu (one column per cpu). The glstats file contains
+a set of these stats for each glock in a similar format to the glocks file, but
+using the format mean/variance for each of the timing stats.
+
+The gfs2_glock_lock_time tracepoint prints out the current values of the stats
+for the glock in question, along with some addition information on each dlm
+reply that is received:
+
+====== =======================================
+status The status of the dlm request
+flags The dlm request flags
+tdiff The time taken by this specific request
+====== =======================================
+
+(remaining fields as per above list)
+
+