block_write_full_page: switch synchronous writes to use WRITE_SYNC_PLUG

Now that we have a distinction between WRITE_SYNC and WRITE_SYNC_PLUG,
use WRITE_SYNC_PLUG in __block_write_full_page() to avoid unplugging
the block device I/O queue between each page that gets flushed out.

Otherwise, when we run sync() or fsync() and we need to write out a
large number of pages, the block device queue will get unplugged
between for every page that is flushed out, which will be a pretty
serious performance regression caused by commit a64c8610.

Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/fs/buffer.c b/fs/buffer.c
index 6e35762..13edf7a 100644
--- a/fs/buffer.c
+++ b/fs/buffer.c
@@ -1596,6 +1596,16 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(unmap_underlying_metadata);
  * locked buffer.   This only can happen if someone has written the buffer
  * directly, with submit_bh().  At the address_space level PageWriteback
  * prevents this contention from occurring.
+ *
+ * If block_write_full_page() is called with wbc->sync_mode ==
+ * WB_SYNC_ALL, the writes are posted using WRITE_SYNC_PLUG; this
+ * causes the writes to be flagged as synchronous writes, but the
+ * block device queue will NOT be unplugged, since usually many pages
+ * will be pushed to the out before the higher-level caller actually
+ * waits for the writes to be completed.  The various wait functions,
+ * such as wait_on_writeback_range() will ultimately call sync_page()
+ * which will ultimately call blk_run_backing_dev(), which will end up
+ * unplugging the device queue.
  */
 static int __block_write_full_page(struct inode *inode, struct page *page,
 			get_block_t *get_block, struct writeback_control *wbc)
@@ -1606,7 +1616,8 @@ static int __block_write_full_page(struct inode *inode, struct page *page,
 	struct buffer_head *bh, *head;
 	const unsigned blocksize = 1 << inode->i_blkbits;
 	int nr_underway = 0;
-	int write_op = (wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_ALL ? WRITE_SYNC : WRITE);
+	int write_op = (wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_ALL ?
+			WRITE_SYNC_PLUG : WRITE);
 
 	BUG_ON(!PageLocked(page));