To provide a very smooth service, bfq starts to serve a bfq_queue
only if the queue is 'eligible', i.e., if the same queue would
have started to be served in the ideal, perfectly fair system that
bfq simulates internally. This is obtained by associating each
queue with a virtual start time, and by computing a special system
virtual time quantity: a queue is eligible only if the system
virtual time has reached the virtual start time of the
queue. Finally, bfq guarantees that, when a new queue must be set
in service, there is always at least one eligible entity for each
active parent entity in the scheduler. To provide this guarantee,
the function __bfq_lookup_next_entity pushes up, for each parent
entity on which it is invoked, the system virtual time to the
minimum among the virtual start times of the entities in the
active tree for the parent entity (more precisely, the push up
occurs if the system virtual time happens to be lower than all
such virtual start times).
There is however a circumstance in which __bfq_lookup_next_entity
cannot push up the system virtual time for a parent entity, even
if the system virtual time is lower than the virtual start times
of all the child entities in the active tree. It happens if one of
the child entities is in service. In fact, in such a case, there
is already an eligible entity, the in-service one, even if it may
not be not present in the active tree (because in-service entities
may be removed from the active tree).
Unfortunately, in the last re-design of the
hierarchical-scheduling engine, the reset of the pointer to the
in-service entity for a given parent entity--reset to be done as a
consequence of the expiration of the in-service entity--always
happens after the function __bfq_lookup_next_entity has been
invoked. This causes the function to think that there is still an
entity in service for the parent entity, and then that the system
virtual time cannot be pushed up, even if actually such a
no-more-in-service entity has already been properly reinserted
into the active tree (or in some other tree if no more
active). Yet, the system virtual time *had* to be pushed up, to be
ready to correctly choose the next queue to serve. Because of the
lack of this push up, bfq may wrongly set in service a queue that
had been speculatively pre-computed as the possible
next-in-service queue, but that would no more be the one to serve
after the expiration and the reinsertion into the active trees of
the previously in-service entities.
This commit addresses this issue by making
__bfq_lookup_next_entity properly push up the system virtual time
if an expiration is occurring.
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Lee Tibbert <lee.tibbert@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Oleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@natalenko.name>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Groups of BFQ queues are represented by generic entities in BFQ. When
a queue belonging to a parent entity is deactivated, the parent entity
may need to be deactivated too, in case the deactivated queue was the
only active queue for the parent entity. This deactivation may need to
be propagated upwards if the entity belongs, in its turn, to a further
higher-level entity, and so on. In particular, the upward propagation
of deactivation stops at the first parent entity that remains active
even if one of its child entities has been deactivated.
To decide whether the last non-deactivation condition holds for a
parent entity, BFQ checks whether the field next_in_service is still
not NULL for the parent entity, after the deactivation of one of its
child entity. If it is not NULL, then there are certainly other active
entities in the parent entity, and deactivations can stop.
Unfortunately, this check misses a corner case: if in_service_entity
is not NULL, then next_in_service may happen to be NULL, although the
parent entity is evidently active. This happens if: 1) the entity
pointed by in_service_entity is the only active entity in the parent
entity, and 2) according to the definition of next_in_service, the
in_service_entity cannot be considered as next_in_service. See the
comments on the definition of next_in_service for details on this
second point.
Hitting the above corner case causes crashes.
To address this issue, this commit:
1) Extends the above check on only next_in_service to controlling both
next_in_service and in_service_entity (if any of them is not NULL,
then no further deactivation is performed)
2) Improves the (important) comments on how next_in_service is defined
and updated; in particular it fixes a few rather obscure paragraphs
Reported-by: Eric Wheeler <bfq-sched@lists.ewheeler.net>
Reported-by: Rick Yiu <rick_yiu@htc.com>
Reported-by: Tom X Nguyen <tom81094@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Eric Wheeler <bfq-sched@lists.ewheeler.net>
Tested-by: Rick Yiu <rick_yiu@htc.com>
Tested-by: Laurentiu Nicola <lnicola@dend.ro>
Tested-by: Tom X Nguyen <tom81094@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
BFQ implements hierarchical scheduling by representing each group of
queues with a generic parent entity. For each parent entity, BFQ
maintains an in_service_entity pointer: if one of the child entities
happens to be in service, in_service_entity points to it. The
resetting of these pointers happens only on queue expirations: when
the in-service queue is expired, i.e., stops to be the queue in
service, BFQ resets all in_service_entity pointers along the
parent-entity path from this queue to the root entity.
Functions handling the scheduling of entities assume, naturally, that
in-service entities are active, i.e., have pending I/O requests (or,
as a special case, even if they have no pending requests, they are
expected to receive a new request very soon, with the scheduler idling
the storage device while waiting for such an event). Unfortunately,
the above resetting scheme of the in_service_entity pointers may cause
this assumption to be violated. For example, the in-service queue may
happen to remain without requests because of a request merge. In this
case the queue does become idle, and all related data structures are
updated accordingly. But in_service_entity still points to the queue
in the parent entity. This inconsistency may even propagate to
higher-level parent entities, if they happen to become idle as well,
as a consequence of the leaf queue becoming idle. For this queue and
parent entities, scheduling functions have an undefined behaviour,
and, as reported, may easily lead to kernel crashes or hangs.
This commit addresses this issue by simply resetting the
in_service_entity field also when it is detected to point to an entity
becoming idle (regardless of why the entity becomes idle).
Reported-by: Laurentiu Nicola <lnicola@dend.ro>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Laurentiu Nicola <lnicola@dend.ro>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
The start time of eligible entity should be less than or equal to
the current virtual time, and the entity in idle tree has a finish
time being greater than the current virtual time.
Signed-off-by: Hou Tao <houtao1@huawei.com>
Reviewed-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
On each deactivation or re-scheduling (after being served) of a
bfq_queue, BFQ invokes the function __bfq_entity_update_weight_prio(),
to perform pending updates of ioprio, weight and ioprio class for the
bfq_queue. BFQ also invokes this function on I/O-request dispatches,
to raise or lower weights more quickly when needed, thereby improving
latency. However, the entity representing the bfq_queue may be on the
active (sub)tree of a service tree when this happens, and, although
with a very low probability, the bfq_queue may happen to also have a
pending change of its ioprio class. If both conditions hold when
__bfq_entity_update_weight_prio() is invoked, then the entity moves to
a sort of hybrid state: the new service tree for the entity, as
returned by bfq_entity_service_tree(), differs from service tree on
which the entity still is. The functions that handle activations and
deactivations of entities do not cope with such a hybrid state (and
would need to become more complex to cope).
This commit addresses this issue by just making
__bfq_entity_update_weight_prio() not perform also a possible pending
change of ioprio class, when invoked on an I/O-request dispatch for a
bfq_queue. Such a change is thus postponed to when
__bfq_entity_update_weight_prio() is invoked on deactivation or
re-scheduling of the bfq_queue.
Reported-by: Marco Piazza <mpiazza@gmail.com>
Reported-by: Laurentiu Nicola <lnicola@dend.ro>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Tested-by: Marco Piazza <mpiazza@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
In the function __bfq_deactivate_entity, the pointer
entity->sched_data could happen to be used before being properly
initialized. This led to a NULL pointer dereference. This commit fixes
this bug by just using this pointer only where it is safe to do so.
Reported-by: Tom Harrison <l12436.tw@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Tom Harrison <l12436.tw@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
The BFQ I/O scheduler features an optimal fair-queuing
(proportional-share) scheduling algorithm, enriched with several
mechanisms to boost throughput and reduce latency for interactive and
real-time applications. This makes BFQ a large and complex piece of
code. This commit addresses this issue by splitting BFQ into three
main, independent components, and by moving each component into a
separate source file:
1. Main algorithm: handles the interaction with the kernel, and
decides which requests to dispatch; it uses the following two further
components to achieve its goals.
2. Scheduling engine (Hierarchical B-WF2Q+ scheduling algorithm):
computes the schedule, using weights and budgets provided by the above
component.
3. cgroups support: handles group operations (creation, destruction,
move, ...).
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
Paolo Valente