Previously, the syncer process was the only process in the
system that could process the soft updates background work
list. If enough other processes were adding requests to that
list, it would eventually grow without bound. Because some of
the work list requests require vnodes to be locked, it was
not generally safe to let random processes process the work
list while they already held vnodes locked. By adding a flag
to the work list queue processing function to indicate whether
the calling process could safely lock vnodes, it becomes possible
to co-opt other processes into helping out with the work list.
Now when the worklist gets too large, other processes can safely
help out by picking off those work requests that can be handled
without locking a vnode, leaving only the small number of
requests requiring a vnode lock for the syncer process. With
this change, it appears possible to keep even the nastiest
workloads under control.
Submitted by: Paul Saab <ps@yahoo-inc.com>
1d733bbd10