[PATCH 1/3] VFS: use synchronize_rcu_expedited() in namespace_unlock()

From: NeilBrown
Date: Wed Nov 08 2017 - 22:25:24 EST


The synchronize_rcu() in namespace_unlock() is called every time
a filesystem is unmounted. If a great many filesystems are mounted,
this can cause a noticable slow-down in, for example, system shutdown.

The sequence:
mkdir -p /tmp/Mtest/{0..5000}
time for i in /tmp/Mtest/*; do mount -t tmpfs tmpfs $i ; done
time umount /tmp/Mtest/*

on a 4-cpu VM can report 8 seconds to mount the tmpfs filesystems, and
100 seconds to unmount them.

Boot the same VM with 1 CPU and it takes 18 seconds to mount the
tmpfs filesystems, but only 36 to unmount.

If we change the synchronize_rcu() to synchronize_rcu_expedited()
the umount time on a 4-cpu VM drop to 0.6 seconds

I think this 200-fold speed up is worth the slightly higher system
impact of using synchronize_rcu_expedited().

Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> (from general rcu perspective)
Signed-off-by: NeilBrown <neilb@xxxxxxxx>
---
fs/namespace.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/namespace.c b/fs/namespace.c
index d18deb4c410b..23cdf6c62895 100644
--- a/fs/namespace.c
+++ b/fs/namespace.c
@@ -1420,7 +1420,7 @@ static void namespace_unlock(void)
if (likely(hlist_empty(&head)))
return;

- synchronize_rcu();
+ synchronize_rcu_expedited();

group_pin_kill(&head);
}