I've been seeing some strange behavior with 4.3-rc1 kernels on my Ubuntu 14.04.3 system. The system will run fine for a few hours, but suddenly start becoming horribly I/O bound. A compile of perf for instance takes 20-30 minutes and the compile seems entirely I/O bound. But, the SSD is only seeing tens or hundreds of KB/s of writes. Looking at some writeback tracepoints shows it hitting balance_dirty_pages() pretty hard with a pretty large number of dirty pages. :) > ld-27008 [000] ...1 88895.190770: balance_dirty_pages: bdi > 8:0: limit=234545 setpoint=204851 dirty=18446744073709513951 > bdi_setpoint=184364 bdi_dirty=33 dirty_ratelimit=24 task_ratelimit=0 > dirtied=1 dirtied_pause=0 paused=0 pause=136 period=136 think=0 > cgroup=/user/1000.user/c2.session So something is underflowing dirty. I added the attached patch and got a warning pretty quickly, so this looks pretty reproducible for me. I'm not 100% sure this is from the 4.3 merge window. I was running the 4.2-rcs, but they seemed to have their own issues. Ubuntu seems to be automatically creating some cgroups, so they're definitely in play here. Any ideas what is going on? > [ 12.415472] ------------[ cut here ]------------ > [ 12.415481] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 1684 at mm/page-writeback.c:2435 account_page_cleaned+0x101/0x110() > [ 12.415483] MEM_CGROUP_STAT_DIRTY bogus > [ 12.415484] Modules linked in: ipt_MASQUERADE nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 iptable_nat nf_nat_ipv4 nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 xt_conntrack nf_conntrack ipt_REJECT nf_reject_ipv4 xt_CHECKSUM iptable_mangle xt_tcpudp bridge stp llc iptable_filter ip_tables ebtable_nat ebtables x_tables dm_crypt cmac rfcomm bnep arc4 iwldvm mac80211 btusb snd_hda_codec_hdmi iwlwifi btrtl btbcm btintel snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_codec_generic bluetooth snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec cfg80211 snd_hwdep snd_hda_core intel_rapl iosf_mbi hid_logitech_hidpp x86_pkg_temp_thermal snd_pcm coretemp ghash_clmulni_intel thinkpad_acpi joydev snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event snd_rawmidi nvram snd_seq snd_timer snd_seq_device wmi snd soundcore mac_hid lpc_ich aesni_intel aes_x86_64 glue_helper lrw gf128mul ablk_helper cryptd kvm_intel kvm hid_logitech_dj sdhci_pci sdhci usbhid hid > [ 12.415538] CPU: 1 PID: 1684 Comm: indicator-keybo Not tainted 4.3.0-rc1-dirty #25 > [ 12.415540] Hardware name: LENOVO 2325AR2/2325AR2, BIOS G2ETA4WW (2.64 ) 04/09/2015 > [ 12.415542] ffffffff81aa8172 ffff8800c926ba30 ffffffff8132e3e2 ffff8800c926ba78 > [ 12.415544] ffff8800c926ba68 ffffffff8105e386 ffffea000fca4700 ffff880409b96420 > [ 12.415547] ffff8803ef979490 ffff880403ff4800 0000000000000000 ffff8800c926bac8 > [ 12.415550] Call Trace: > [ 12.415555] [] dump_stack+0x4b/0x69 > [ 12.415560] [] warn_slowpath_common+0x86/0xc0 > [ 12.415563] [] warn_slowpath_fmt+0x4c/0x50 > [ 12.415566] [] account_page_cleaned+0x101/0x110 > [ 12.415568] [] cancel_dirty_page+0xbd/0xf0 > [ 12.415571] [] try_to_free_buffers+0x94/0xb0 > [ 12.415575] [] jbd2_journal_try_to_free_buffers+0x100/0x130 > [ 12.415578] [] ext4_releasepage+0x52/0xa0 > [ 12.415582] [] try_to_release_page+0x35/0x50 > [ 12.415585] [] block_invalidatepage+0x113/0x130 > [ 12.415587] [] ext4_invalidatepage+0x5e/0xb0 > [ 12.415590] [] ext4_da_invalidatepage+0x40/0x310 > [ 12.415593] [] truncate_inode_page+0x83/0x90 > [ 12.415595] [] truncate_inode_pages_range+0x199/0x730 > [ 12.415598] [] ? __wake_up+0x44/0x50 > [ 12.415600] [] ? jbd2_journal_stop+0x1ba/0x3b0 > [ 12.415603] [] ? ext4_unlink+0x2f4/0x330 > [ 12.415607] [] ? __inode_wait_for_writeback+0x6d/0xc0 > [ 12.415609] [] truncate_inode_pages_final+0x4c/0x60 > [ 12.415612] [] ext4_evict_inode+0x116/0x4c0 > [ 12.415615] [] evict+0xbc/0x190 > [ 12.415617] [] iput+0x17d/0x1e0 > [ 12.415620] [] do_unlinkat+0x1ab/0x2b0 > [ 12.415622] [] SyS_unlink+0x16/0x20 > [ 12.415626] [] entry_SYSCALL_64_fastpath+0x12/0x6a > [ 12.415628] ---[ end trace 6fba1ddd3d240e13 ]--- > [ 12.418211] ------------[ cut here ]------------