1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
2
3============================
4Glock internal locking rules
5============================
6
7This documents the basic principles of the glock state machine
8internals. Each glock (struct gfs2_glock in fs/gfs2/incore.h)
9has two main (internal) locks:
10
11 1. A spinlock (gl_lockref.lock) which protects the internal state such
12    as gl_state, gl_target and the list of holders (gl_holders)
13 2. A non-blocking bit lock, GLF_LOCK, which is used to prevent other
14    threads from making calls to the DLM, etc. at the same time. If a
15    thread takes this lock, it must then call run_queue (usually via the
16    workqueue) when it releases it in order to ensure any pending tasks
17    are completed.
18
19The gl_holders list contains all the queued lock requests (not
20just the holders) associated with the glock. If there are any
21held locks, then they will be contiguous entries at the head
22of the list. Locks are granted in strictly the order that they
23are queued, except for those marked LM_FLAG_PRIORITY which are
24used only during recovery, and even then only for journal locks.
25
26There are three lock states that users of the glock layer can request,
27namely shared (SH), deferred (DF) and exclusive (EX). Those translate
28to the following DLM lock modes:
29
30==========	====== =====================================================
31Glock mode      DLM    lock mode
32==========	====== =====================================================
33    UN          IV/NL  Unlocked (no DLM lock associated with glock) or NL
34    SH          PR     (Protected read)
35    DF          CW     (Concurrent write)
36    EX          EX     (Exclusive)
37==========	====== =====================================================
38
39Thus DF is basically a shared mode which is incompatible with the "normal"
40shared lock mode, SH. In GFS2 the DF mode is used exclusively for direct I/O
41operations. The glocks are basically a lock plus some routines which deal
42with cache management. The following rules apply for the cache:
43
44==========      ==========   ==============   ==========   ==============
45Glock mode      Cache data   Cache Metadata   Dirty Data   Dirty Metadata
46==========      ==========   ==============   ==========   ==============
47    UN             No              No             No            No
48    SH             Yes             Yes            No            No
49    DF             No              Yes            No            No
50    EX             Yes             Yes            Yes           Yes
51==========      ==========   ==============   ==========   ==============
52
53These rules are implemented using the various glock operations which
54are defined for each type of glock. Not all types of glocks use
55all the modes. Only inode glocks use the DF mode for example.
56
57Table of glock operations and per type constants:
58
59=============      =============================================================
60Field              Purpose
61=============      =============================================================
62go_xmote_th        Called before remote state change (e.g. to sync dirty data)
63go_xmote_bh        Called after remote state change (e.g. to refill cache)
64go_inval           Called if remote state change requires invalidating the cache
65go_demote_ok       Returns boolean value of whether its ok to demote a glock
66                   (e.g. checks timeout, and that there is no cached data)
67go_lock            Called for the first local holder of a lock
68go_unlock          Called on the final local unlock of a lock
69go_dump            Called to print content of object for debugfs file, or on
70                   error to dump glock to the log.
71go_type            The type of the glock, ``LM_TYPE_*``
72go_callback	   Called if the DLM sends a callback to drop this lock
73go_flags	   GLOF_ASPACE is set, if the glock has an address space
74                   associated with it
75=============      =============================================================
76
77The minimum hold time for each lock is the time after a remote lock
78grant for which we ignore remote demote requests. This is in order to
79prevent a situation where locks are being bounced around the cluster
80from node to node with none of the nodes making any progress. This
81tends to show up most with shared mmapped files which are being written
82to by multiple nodes. By delaying the demotion in response to a
83remote callback, that gives the userspace program time to make
84some progress before the pages are unmapped.
85
86There is a plan to try and remove the go_lock and go_unlock callbacks
87if possible, in order to try and speed up the fast path though the locking.
88Also, eventually we hope to make the glock "EX" mode locally shared
89such that any local locking will be done with the i_mutex as required
90rather than via the glock.
91
92Locking rules for glock operations:
93
94=============    ======================    =============================
95Operation        GLF_LOCK bit lock held    gl_lockref.lock spinlock held
96=============    ======================    =============================
97go_xmote_th           Yes                       No
98go_xmote_bh           Yes                       No
99go_inval              Yes                       No
100go_demote_ok          Sometimes                 Yes
101go_lock               Yes                       No
102go_unlock             Yes                       No
103go_dump               Sometimes                 Yes
104go_callback           Sometimes (N/A)           Yes
105=============    ======================    =============================
106
107.. Note::
108
109   Operations must not drop either the bit lock or the spinlock
110   if its held on entry. go_dump and do_demote_ok must never block.
111   Note that go_dump will only be called if the glock's state
112   indicates that it is caching uptodate data.
113
114Glock locking order within GFS2:
115
116 1. i_rwsem (if required)
117 2. Rename glock (for rename only)
118 3. Inode glock(s)
119    (Parents before children, inodes at "same level" with same parent in
120    lock number order)
121 4. Rgrp glock(s) (for (de)allocation operations)
122 5. Transaction glock (via gfs2_trans_begin) for non-read operations
123 6. i_rw_mutex (if required)
124 7. Page lock  (always last, very important!)
125
126There are two glocks per inode. One deals with access to the inode
127itself (locking order as above), and the other, known as the iopen
128glock is used in conjunction with the i_nlink field in the inode to
129determine the lifetime of the inode in question. Locking of inodes
130is on a per-inode basis. Locking of rgrps is on a per rgrp basis.
131In general we prefer to lock local locks prior to cluster locks.
132
133Glock Statistics
134----------------
135
136The stats are divided into two sets: those relating to the
137super block and those relating to an individual glock. The
138super block stats are done on a per cpu basis in order to
139try and reduce the overhead of gathering them. They are also
140further divided by glock type. All timings are in nanoseconds.
141
142In the case of both the super block and glock statistics,
143the same information is gathered in each case. The super
144block timing statistics are used to provide default values for
145the glock timing statistics, so that newly created glocks
146should have, as far as possible, a sensible starting point.
147The per-glock counters are initialised to zero when the
148glock is created. The per-glock statistics are lost when
149the glock is ejected from memory.
150
151The statistics are divided into three pairs of mean and
152variance, plus two counters. The mean/variance pairs are
153smoothed exponential estimates and the algorithm used is
154one which will be very familiar to those used to calculation
155of round trip times in network code. See "TCP/IP Illustrated,
156Volume 1", W. Richard Stevens, sect 21.3, "Round-Trip Time Measurement",
157p. 299 and onwards. Also, Volume 2, Sect. 25.10, p. 838 and onwards.
158Unlike the TCP/IP Illustrated case, the mean and variance are
159not scaled, but are in units of integer nanoseconds.
160
161The three pairs of mean/variance measure the following
162things:
163
164 1. DLM lock time (non-blocking requests)
165 2. DLM lock time (blocking requests)
166 3. Inter-request time (again to the DLM)
167
168A non-blocking request is one which will complete right
169away, whatever the state of the DLM lock in question. That
170currently means any requests when (a) the current state of
171the lock is exclusive, i.e. a lock demotion (b) the requested
172state is either null or unlocked (again, a demotion) or (c) the
173"try lock" flag is set. A blocking request covers all the other
174lock requests.
175
176There are two counters. The first is there primarily to show
177how many lock requests have been made, and thus how much data
178has gone into the mean/variance calculations. The other counter
179is counting queuing of holders at the top layer of the glock
180code. Hopefully that number will be a lot larger than the number
181of dlm lock requests issued.
182
183So why gather these statistics? There are several reasons
184we'd like to get a better idea of these timings:
185
1861. To be able to better set the glock "min hold time"
1872. To spot performance issues more easily
1883. To improve the algorithm for selecting resource groups for
189   allocation (to base it on lock wait time, rather than blindly
190   using a "try lock")
191
192Due to the smoothing action of the updates, a step change in
193some input quantity being sampled will only fully be taken
194into account after 8 samples (or 4 for the variance) and this
195needs to be carefully considered when interpreting the
196results.
197
198Knowing both the time it takes a lock request to complete and
199the average time between lock requests for a glock means we
200can compute the total percentage of the time for which the
201node is able to use a glock vs. time that the rest of the
202cluster has its share. That will be very useful when setting
203the lock min hold time.
204
205Great care has been taken to ensure that we
206measure exactly the quantities that we want, as accurately
207as possible. There are always inaccuracies in any
208measuring system, but I hope this is as accurate as we
209can reasonably make it.
210
211Per sb stats can be found here::
212
213    /sys/kernel/debug/gfs2/<fsname>/sbstats
214
215Per glock stats can be found here::
216
217    /sys/kernel/debug/gfs2/<fsname>/glstats
218
219Assuming that debugfs is mounted on /sys/kernel/debug and also
220that <fsname> is replaced with the name of the gfs2 filesystem
221in question.
222
223The abbreviations used in the output as are follows:
224
225=========  ================================================================
226srtt       Smoothed round trip time for non blocking dlm requests
227srttvar    Variance estimate for srtt
228srttb      Smoothed round trip time for (potentially) blocking dlm requests
229srttvarb   Variance estimate for srttb
230sirt       Smoothed inter request time (for dlm requests)
231sirtvar    Variance estimate for sirt
232dlm        Number of dlm requests made (dcnt in glstats file)
233queue      Number of glock requests queued (qcnt in glstats file)
234=========  ================================================================
235
236The sbstats file contains a set of these stats for each glock type (so 8 lines
237for each type) and for each cpu (one column per cpu). The glstats file contains
238a set of these stats for each glock in a similar format to the glocks file, but
239using the format mean/variance for each of the timing stats.
240
241The gfs2_glock_lock_time tracepoint prints out the current values of the stats
242for the glock in question, along with some addition information on each dlm
243reply that is received:
244
245======   =======================================
246status   The status of the dlm request
247flags    The dlm request flags
248tdiff    The time taken by this specific request
249======   =======================================
250
251(remaining fields as per above list)
252
253
254