xfs: ensure log covering transactions are synchronous

To ensure the log is covered and the filesystem idles correctly, we
need to ensure that dummy transactions hit the disk and do not stay
pinned in memory.  If the superblock is pinned in memory, it can't
be flushed so the log covering cannot make progress. The result is
dependent on timing - more oftent han not we continue to issues a
log covering transaction every 36s rather than idling after ~90s.

Fix this by making the log covering transaction synchronous. To
avoid additional log force from xfssyncd, make the log covering
transaction take the place of the existing log force in the xfssyncd
background sync process.

Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Alex Elder <aelder@sgi.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_sync.c b/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_sync.c
index a02480de975..e22f0057d21 100644
--- a/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_sync.c
+++ b/fs/xfs/linux-2.6/xfs_sync.c
@@ -362,7 +362,7 @@ xfs_quiesce_data(
 
         /* mark the log as covered if needed */
         if (xfs_log_need_covered(mp))
-                error2 = xfs_fs_log_dummy(mp, SYNC_WAIT);
+                error2 = xfs_fs_log_dummy(mp);
 
         /* flush data-only devices */
         if (mp->m_rtdev_targp)
@@ -503,13 +503,14 @@ xfs_sync_worker(
         int             error;
 
         if (!(mp->m_flags & XFS_MOUNT_RDONLY)) {
-                xfs_log_force(mp, 0);
-                xfs_reclaim_inodes(mp, 0);
                 /* dgc: errors ignored here */
-                error = xfs_qm_sync(mp, SYNC_TRYLOCK);
                 if (mp->m_super->s_frozen == SB_UNFROZEN &&
                     xfs_log_need_covered(mp))
-                        error = xfs_fs_log_dummy(mp, 0);
+                        error = xfs_fs_log_dummy(mp);
+                else
+                        xfs_log_force(mp, 0);
+                xfs_reclaim_inodes(mp, 0);
+                error = xfs_qm_sync(mp, SYNC_TRYLOCK);
         }
         mp->m_sync_seq++;
         wake_up(&mp->m_wait_single_sync_task);