[RFC PATCH v2 0/3] fs/proc: split the inode list for procfs

From: Huang Shijie

Date: Sun Sep 20 2026 - 03:33:48 EST


The global s_inode_list_lock is heavily contended in procfs
on a 384-CPU, 12-NUMA-node Hygon machine running Hadoop TestDFSIO:
#hadoop jar xxxx.jar TestDFSIO -read -nrFiles 1000 -size 100MB

The hadoop will create lot of threads during the test.
The perf shows it consuming ~90% of the lock hotspot in procfs.
The lock is hit from both directions:
-- inode creation (~49%) :
getdents64 ->
proc_readfd_common ->
new_inode ->
inode_sb_list_add()

-- inode eviction (~41%):
process exit ->
release_task ->
proc_invalidate_siblings_dcache ->
evict ->
inode_sb_list_del()

This patch set tries to resolve this issue by:
patch 1: "fs/drop_caches: skip filesystems without page cache"
add a new flag for filesystems without page cache.
patch 2: Add a new helper to detect the empty inode list
patch 3: split the inode list.


After this patch set, the above TestDFSIO can get over 50% better performance
in exec time. And the procfs lock hotspot becomes nearly 1%.

Huang Shijie (3):
fs/drop_caches: skip filesystems without page cache
fs/super: introduce a helper sb_inodes_empty()
fs/proc: split the inode list

fs/drop_caches.c | 3 +
fs/inode.c | 79 ++++++++++------
fs/proc/inode.c | 53 +++++++++++
fs/proc/internal.h | 2 +
fs/proc/root.c | 8 +-
fs/super.c | 45 +++++++--
include/linux/fs/super_types.h | 17 ++++
include/linux/proc_fs.h | 1 +
security/landlock/fs.c | 162 ++++++++++++++++++---------------
9 files changed, 260 insertions(+), 110 deletions(-)

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2.53.0