Skip to content

Conversation

@kakra
Copy link
Owner

@kakra kakra commented Dec 14, 2025

Export patch series: https://github.com/kakra/linux/pull/41.patch

  • based on an idea by Eric Wheeler
  • low priority IO requests bypass the cache to reduce SSD wear from backups and maintenance jobs

kakra and others added 3 commits December 13, 2025 21:43
…ack hints

Add sysfs entries to support to hint for bypass/writeback by the ioprio
assigned to the bio.  If the bio is unassigned, use current's io-context
ioprio for cache writeback or bypass (configured per-process with
`ionice`).

Having idle IOs bypass the cache can increase performance elsewhere
since you probably don't care about their performance.  In addition,
this prevents idle IOs from promoting into (polluting) your cache and
evicting blocks that are more important elsewhere.

If you really nead the performance at the expense of SSD wearout,
then configure ioprio_writeback and set your `ionice` appropriately.

For example:
	echo 2,7 > /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/ioprio_bypass
	echo 2,0 > /sys/block/bcache0/bcache/ioprio_writeback

See the documentation commit for details.

v2: Removed calls to get_task_io_context()
v3: bio_prio() macro has been deleted

Co-authored-by: Eric Wheeler <bcache@linux.ewheeler.net>
Signed-off-by: Eric Wheeler <bcache@linux.ewheeler.net>
Acked-by: Kent Overstreet <kent.overstreet@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Kai Krakow <kai@kaishome.de>
Cc: nix@esperi.org.uk
Signed-off-by: Kai Krakow <kai@kaishome.de>
v2: get_task_io_context() no longer exists in the kernel

Signed-off-by: Eric Wheeler <bcache@linux.ewheeler.net>
Signed-off-by: Kai Krakow <kai@kaishome.de>
Even if ioprio_bypass hints bypassing the request, we still allow it
for REQ_META|REQ_PRIO bio.

Cc: Eric Wheeler <bcache@linux.ewheeler.net>
Signed-off-by: Kai Krakow <kai@kaishome.de>
@kakra kakra changed the title Rebase 6.18/bcache updates [6.18] bcache IO hinting updates Dec 14, 2025
It seems to queue a lot of work, and I've seen messages like this,
suggesting to switch to WQ_UNBOUND:

> kernel: workqueue: cache_lookup hogged CPU for >10000us 11 times, consider switching to WQ_UNBOUND

Short observation shows, that this might also improve perceived
desktop responsiveness. But this needs more testing.

Signed-off-by: Kai Krakow <kai@kaishome.de>
@kakra
Copy link
Owner Author

kakra commented Jan 5, 2026

Added a commit to prevent the following message:

kernel: workqueue: cache_lookup hogged CPU for >10000us 11 times, consider switching to WQ_UNBOUND

Early perceived result is improved desktop responsiveness.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

2 participants