[PATCH v2] blk-cgroup: skip rstat flush for cgroups without blkgs
From: Usama Arif
Date: Mon Sep 21 2026 - 09:39:34 EST
Non-root io.stat reads flush the blkcg rstat subtree before walking
->blkg_list. This takes the subsystem rstat lock and checks for pending
updates on every possible CPU, even when there is no per-device state to
print.
Blkg creation is hierarchical. A descendant blkg implies an ancestor
blkg on the same device, so an empty ->blkg_list means the subtree cannot
contribute any output. Return early in that case.
A concurrent first blkg may be deferred to the next read. This is
consistent with the existing non-atomic flush and list walk.
i
This is not rare: 340 of 969 io.stat files were empty on a 316-CPU host.
In a 16-vCPU guest, the median open/read/close time over 35 batches of
20,000 reads changed as follows:
before after
empty io.stat 7.02 us 5.47 us
populated io.stat 7.84 us 7.83 us
This is a ~22% reduction for empty reads. Populated reads were
unchanged.
Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Usama Arif <usama.arif@xxxxxxxxx>
---
v1 -> v2:
- Updated commit message with perf numbers with lockdep disabled (Tejun)
---
block/blk-cgroup.c | 11 +++++++++--
1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/block/blk-cgroup.c b/block/blk-cgroup.c
index 2b5c29434e426..0d7a451473b04 100644
--- a/block/blk-cgroup.c
+++ b/block/blk-cgroup.c
@@ -1189,10 +1189,17 @@ static int blkcg_print_stat(struct seq_file *sf, void *v)
struct blkcg *blkcg = css_to_blkcg(seq_css(sf));
struct blkcg_gq *blkg;
- if (!seq_css(sf)->parent)
+ if (!seq_css(sf)->parent) {
blkcg_fill_root_iostats();
- else
+ } else {
+ /*
+ * Descendant blkgs imply ancestor blkgs, so an empty
+ * ->blkg_list has no stats to report.
+ */
+ if (hlist_empty(&blkcg->blkg_list))
+ return 0;
css_rstat_flush(&blkcg->css);
+ }
guard(spinlock_irq)(&blkcg->lock);
hlist_for_each_entry(blkg, &blkcg->blkg_list, blkcg_node)
--
2.53.0-Meta