In some drives, flush requests are non-queueable. When flush request is
running, normal read/write requests can't run. If block layer dispatches
such request, driver can't handle it and requeue it. Tejun suggested we
can hold the queue when flush is running. This can avoid unnecessary
requeue. Also this can improve performance. For example, we have
request flush1, write1, flush 2. flush1 is dispatched, then queue is
hold, write1 isn't inserted to queue. After flush1 is finished, flush2
will be dispatched. Since disk cache is already clean, flush2 will be
finished very soon, so looks like flush2 is folded to flush1.
In my test, the queue holding completely solves a regression introduced by
commit 53d63e6b0d:
block: make the flush insertion use the tail of the dispatch list
It's not a preempt type request, in fact we have to insert it
behind requests that do specify INSERT_FRONT.
which causes about 20% regression running a sysbench fileio
workload.
Stable: 2.6.39 only
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com>
Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
3ac0cc4508