The patch below does not apply to the 6.1-stable tree. If someone wants it applied there, or to any other stable or longterm tree, then please email the backport, including the original git commit id to stable@vger.kernel.org.

To reproduce the conflict and resubmit, you may use the following commands:

git fetch https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/ linux-6.1.y git checkout FETCH_HEAD git cherry-pick -x 66d590b828b1fd9fa337047ae58fe1c4c6f43609 # <resolve conflicts, build, test, etc.> git commit -s git send-email --to 'stable@vger.kernel.org' --in-reply-to '2025062054-luminance-hacker-c550@gregkh' --subject-prefix 'PATCH 6.1.y' HEAD^..

Possible dependencies:

thanks,

greg k-h

------------------ original commit in Linus's tree ------------------

From 66d590b828b1fd9fa337047ae58fe1c4c6f43609 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Shyam Prasad N sprasad@microsoft.com Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2025 22:37:12 +0530 Subject: [PATCH] cifs: deal with the channel loading lag while picking channels

Our current approach to select a channel for sending requests is this: 1. iterate all channels to find the min and max queue depth 2. if min and max are not the same, pick the channel with min depth 3. if min and max are same, round robin, as all channels are equally loaded

The problem with this approach is that there's a lag between selecting a channel and sending the request (that increases the queue depth on the channel). While these numbers will eventually catch up, there could be a skew in the channel usage, depending on the application's I/O parallelism and the server's speed of handling requests.

With sufficient parallelism, this lag can artificially increase the queue depth, thereby impacting the performance negatively.

This change will change the step 1 above to start the iteration from the last selected channel. This is to reduce the skew in channel usage even in the presence of this lag.

Fixes: ea90708d3cf3 ("cifs: use the least loaded channel for sending requests") Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Shyam Prasad N sprasad@microsoft.com Signed-off-by: Steve French stfrench@microsoft.com

diff --git a/fs/smb/client/transport.c b/fs/smb/client/transport.c index 266af17aa7d9..191783f553ce 100644 --- a/fs/smb/client/transport.c +++ b/fs/smb/client/transport.c @@ -1018,14 +1018,16 @@ struct TCP_Server_Info *cifs_pick_channel(struct cifs_ses *ses) uint index = 0; unsigned int min_in_flight = UINT_MAX, max_in_flight = 0; struct TCP_Server_Info *server = NULL; - int i; + int i, start, cur;

if (!ses) return NULL;

spin_lock(&ses->chan_lock); + start = atomic_inc_return(&ses->chan_seq); for (i = 0; i < ses->chan_count; i++) { - server = ses->chans[i].server; + cur = (start + i) % ses->chan_count; + server = ses->chans[cur].server; if (!server || server->terminate) continue;

@@ -1042,17 +1044,15 @@ struct TCP_Server_Info *cifs_pick_channel(struct cifs_ses *ses) */ if (server->in_flight < min_in_flight) { min_in_flight = server->in_flight; - index = i; + index = cur; } if (server->in_flight > max_in_flight) max_in_flight = server->in_flight; }

/* if all channels are equally loaded, fall back to round-robin */ - if (min_in_flight == max_in_flight) { - index = (uint)atomic_inc_return(&ses->chan_seq); - index %= ses->chan_count; - } + if (min_in_flight == max_in_flight) + index = (uint)start % ses->chan_count;

server = ses->chans[index].server; spin_unlock(&ses->chan_lock);