summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorMel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>2009-06-16 15:33:20 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2009-06-16 19:47:45 -0700
commit90afa5de6f3fa89a733861e843377302479fcf7e (patch)
tree2870878fa3361c27551b5a18c4732073ae1432bd /Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
parent84a892456046921a40646114deed65e2df93a1bc (diff)
vmscan: properly account for the number of page cache pages zone_reclaim() can reclaim
A bug was brought to my attention against a distro kernel but it affects mainline and I believe problems like this have been reported in various guises on the mailing lists although I don't have specific examples at the moment. The reported problem was that malloc() stalled for a long time (minutes in some cases) if a large tmpfs mount was occupying a large percentage of memory overall. The pages did not get cleaned or reclaimed by zone_reclaim() because the zone_reclaim_mode was unsuitable, but the lists are uselessly scanned frequencly making the CPU spin at near 100%. This patchset intends to address that bug and bring the behaviour of zone_reclaim() more in line with expectations which were noticed during investigation. It is based on top of mmotm and takes advantage of Kosaki's work with respect to zone_reclaim(). Patch 1 fixes the heuristics that zone_reclaim() uses to determine if the scan should go ahead. The broken heuristic is what was causing the malloc() stall as it uselessly scanned the LRU constantly. Currently, zone_reclaim is assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 and historically it could not deal with tmpfs pages at all. This fixes up the heuristic so that an unnecessary scan is more likely to be correctly avoided. Patch 2 notes that zone_reclaim() returning a failure automatically means the zone is marked full. This is not always true. It could have failed because the GFP mask or zone_reclaim_mode were unsuitable. Patch 3 introduces a counter zreclaim_failed that will increment each time the zone_reclaim scan-avoidance heuristics fail. If that counter is rapidly increasing, then zone_reclaim_mode should be set to 0 as a temporarily resolution and a bug reported because the scan-avoidance heuristic is still broken. This patch: On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that is a more targetted form of direct reclaim. On machines with large NUMA distances for example, a zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that clean unmapped pages will be reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not being met. There is a heuristic that determines if the scan is worthwhile but the problem is that the heuristic is not being properly applied and is basically assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 if it is enabled. The lack of proper detection can manfiest as high CPU usage as the LRU list is scanned uselessly. Historically, once enabled it was depending on NR_FILE_PAGES which may include swapcache pages that the reclaim_mode cannot deal with. Patch vmscan-change-the-number-of-the-unmapped-files-in-zone-reclaim.patch by Kosaki Motohiro noted that zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES) included pages that were not file-backed such as swapcache and made a calculation based on the inactive, active and mapped files. This is far superior when zone_reclaim==1 but if RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then NR_FILE_PAGES is a reasonable starting figure. This patch alters how zone_reclaim() works out how many pages it might be able to reclaim given the current reclaim_mode. If RECLAIM_SWAP is set in the reclaim_mode it will either consider NR_FILE_PAGES as potential candidates or else use NR_{IN}ACTIVE}_PAGES-NR_FILE_MAPPED to discount swapcache and other non-file-backed pages. If RECLAIM_WRITE is not set, then NR_FILE_DIRTY number of pages are not candidates. If RECLAIM_SWAP is not set, then NR_FILE_MAPPED are not. [kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: Estimate unmapped pages minus tmpfs pages] [fengguang.wu@intel.com: Fix underflow problem in Kosaki's estimate] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt12
1 files changed, 8 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 0ea5adbc5b1..c4de6359d44 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -315,10 +315,14 @@ min_unmapped_ratio:
This is available only on NUMA kernels.
-A percentage of the total pages in each zone. Zone reclaim will only
-occur if more than this percentage of pages are file backed and unmapped.
-This is to insure that a minimal amount of local pages is still available for
-file I/O even if the node is overallocated.
+This is a percentage of the total pages in each zone. Zone reclaim will
+only occur if more than this percentage of pages are in a state that
+zone_reclaim_mode allows to be reclaimed.
+
+If zone_reclaim_mode has the value 4 OR'd, then the percentage is compared
+against all file-backed unmapped pages including swapcache pages and tmpfs
+files. Otherwise, only unmapped pages backed by normal files but not tmpfs
+files and similar are considered.
The default is 1 percent.