[PATCH 09/11] NFS: Improve performance of listing directories being modified

From: Dave Wysochanski <dwysocha@redhat.com>
To: Trond Myklebust <trondmy@hammerspace.com>,
	Anna Schumaker <anna.schumaker@netapp.com>
Cc: linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH 09/11] NFS: Improve performance of listing directories being modified
Date: Mon,  2 Nov 2020 08:50:09 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1604325011-29427-10-git-send-email-dwysocha@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1604325011-29427-1-git-send-email-dwysocha@redhat.com>

A process can hang forever to 'ls -l' a directory while the directory
is being modified such as another NFS client adding files to the
directory.  The problem is seen specifically with larger directories
(I tested with 1 million) and/or slower NFS server responses to
READDIR.  If a combination of the NFS directory size, the NFS server
responses to READDIR is such that the 'ls' process gets partially
through the listing before the attribute cache expires (time
exceeds acdirmax), we drop the pagecache and have to re-fill it,
and as a result, the process may never complete.  One could argue
for larger directories the acdirmin/acdirmax should be increased,
but it's not always possible to tune this effectively.

The root cause of this problem is due to how the NFS readdir cache
currently works.  The main search function, readdir_search_pagecache(),
always starts searching at page_index and cookie == 0, and for any
page not in the cache, fills in the page with entries obtained in
a READDIR NFS call.  If a page already exists, we proceed to
nfs_readdir_search_for_cookie(), which searches for the cookie
(pos) of the readdir call.  The search is O(n), where n is the
directory size before the cookie in question is found, and every
entry to nfs_readdir() pays this penalty, irrespective of the
current directory position (dir_context.pos).  The search is
expensive due to the opaque nature of readdir cookies, and the fact
that no mapping (hash) exists from cookies to pages.  In the case
of a directory being modified, the above behavior can become an
excessive penalty, since the same process is forced to fill pages it
may be no longer interested in (the entries were passed in a previous
nfs_readdir call), and this can essentially lead no forward progress.

To fix this problem, at the end of nfs_readdir(), save the page_index
corresponding to the directory position (cookie) inside the process's
nfs_open_dir_context.  Then at the next entry of nfs_readdir(), use
the saved page_index as the starting search point rather than starting
at page_index == 0.  Not only does this fix the problem of listing
a directory being modified, it also significantly improves performance
in the unmodified case since no extra search penalty is paid at each
entry to nfs_readdir().

In the case of lseek, since there is no hash or other mapping from a
cookie value to the page->index, just reset nfs_open_dir_context.page_index
to 0, which will reset the search to the old behavior.

Signed-off-by: Dave Wysochanski <dwysocha@redhat.com>
---
 fs/nfs/dir.c           | 8 +++++++-
 include/linux/nfs_fs.h | 1 +
 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/nfs/dir.c b/fs/nfs/dir.c
index 52e06c8fc7cd..b266f505b521 100644
--- a/fs/nfs/dir.c
+++ b/fs/nfs/dir.c
@@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ static struct nfs_open_dir_context *alloc_nfs_open_dir_context(struct inode *dir
 		ctx->attr_gencount = nfsi->attr_gencount;
 		ctx->dir_cookie = 0;
 		ctx->dup_cookie = 0;
+		ctx->page_index = 0;
 		ctx->cred = get_cred(cred);
 		spin_lock(&dir->i_lock);
 		if (list_empty(&nfsi->open_files) &&
@@ -763,7 +764,7 @@ int find_and_lock_cache_page(nfs_readdir_descriptor_t *desc)
 	return res;
 }
 
-/* Search for desc->dir_cookie from the beginning of the page cache */
+/* Search for desc->dir_cookie starting at desc->page_index */
 static inline
 int readdir_search_pagecache(nfs_readdir_descriptor_t *desc)
 {
@@ -885,6 +886,8 @@ static int nfs_readdir(struct file *file, struct dir_context *ctx)
 		.ctx = ctx,
 		.dir_cookie = &dir_ctx->dir_cookie,
 		.plus = nfs_use_readdirplus(inode, ctx),
+		.page_index = dir_ctx->page_index,
+		.last_cookie = nfs_readdir_use_cookie(file) ? ctx->pos : 0,
 	},
 			*desc = &my_desc;
 	int res = 0;
@@ -938,6 +941,7 @@ static int nfs_readdir(struct file *file, struct dir_context *ctx)
 out:
 	if (res > 0)
 		res = 0;
+	dir_ctx->page_index = desc->page_index;
 	trace_nfs_readdir_exit(inode, ctx->pos, dir_ctx->dir_cookie,
 			       NFS_SERVER(inode)->dtsize, my_desc.plus, res);
 	return res;
@@ -975,6 +979,8 @@ static loff_t nfs_llseek_dir(struct file *filp, loff_t offset, int whence)
 		else
 			dir_ctx->dir_cookie = 0;
 		dir_ctx->duped = 0;
+		/* Force readdir_search_pagecache to start over */
+		dir_ctx->page_index = 0;
 	}
 	inode_unlock(inode);
 	return offset;
diff --git a/include/linux/nfs_fs.h b/include/linux/nfs_fs.h
index a2c6455ea3fa..0e55c0154ccd 100644
--- a/include/linux/nfs_fs.h
+++ b/include/linux/nfs_fs.h
@@ -93,6 +93,7 @@ struct nfs_open_dir_context {
 	__u64 dir_cookie;
 	__u64 dup_cookie;
 	signed char duped;
+	unsigned long	page_index;
 };
 
 /*
-- 
1.8.3.1

