Herbert Poetzl reported a performance regression since 2.6.39.  The test
is a simple dd read, but with big block size.  The reason is:

T1: ra (A, A+128k), (A+128k, A+256k)
T2: lock_page for page A, submit the 256k
T3: hit page A+128K, ra (A+256k, A+384). the range isn't submitted
because of plug and there isn't any lock_page till we hit page A+256k
because all pages from A to A+256k is in memory
T4: hit page A+256k, ra (A+384, A+ 512). Because of plug, the range isn't
submitted again.
T5: lock_page A+256k, so (A+256k, A+512k) will be submitted. The task is
waitting for (A+256k, A+512k) finish.

There is no request to disk in T3 and T4, so readahead pipeline breaks.

We really don't need block plug for generic_file_aio_read() for buffered
I/O.  The readahead already has plug and has fine grained control when I/O
should be submitted.  Deleting plug for buffered I/O fixes the regression.

One side effect is plug makes the request size 256k, the size is 128k
without it.  This is because default ra size is 128k and not a reason we
need plug here.

Vivek said:

: We submit some readahead IO to device request queue but because of nested
: plug, queue never gets unplugged.  When read logic reaches a page which is
: not in page cache, it waits for page to be read from the disk
: (lock_page_killable()) and that time we flush the plug list.
:
: So effectively read ahead logic is kind of broken in parts because of
: nested plugging.  Removing top level plug (generic_file_aio_read()) for
: buffered reads, will allow unplugging queue earlier for readahead.
Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Reported-by: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Tested-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>