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authorMel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>2009-06-16 15:32:12 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2009-06-16 19:47:35 -0700
commit418589663d6011de9006425b6c5721e1544fb47a (patch)
treeef37fb026d3e38191d6b5c99bc95c190fa98d0fb /Documentation
parenta3af9c389a7f3e675313f442fdd8c247c1cdb66b (diff)
page allocator: use allocation flags as an index to the zone watermark
ALLOC_WMARK_MIN, ALLOC_WMARK_LOW and ALLOC_WMARK_HIGH determin whether pages_min, pages_low or pages_high is used as the zone watermark when allocating the pages. Two branches in the allocator hotpath determine which watermark to use. This patch uses the flags as an array index into a watermark array that is indexed with WMARK_* defines accessed via helpers. All call sites that use zone->pages_* are updated to use the helpers for accessing the values and the array offsets for setting. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt11
-rw-r--r--Documentation/vm/balance18
2 files changed, 15 insertions, 14 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 6fab2dcbb4d..0ea5adbc5b1 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -233,8 +233,8 @@ These protections are added to score to judge whether this zone should be used
for page allocation or should be reclaimed.
In this example, if normal pages (index=2) are required to this DMA zone and
-pages_high is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should not be
-used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
+watermark[WMARK_HIGH] is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should
+not be used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
(4 + 2004 = 2008). If this protection value is 0, this zone would be used for
normal page requirement. If requirement is DMA zone(index=0), protection[0]
(=0) is used.
@@ -280,9 +280,10 @@ The default value is 65536.
min_free_kbytes:
This is used to force the Linux VM to keep a minimum number
-of kilobytes free. The VM uses this number to compute a pages_min
-value for each lowmem zone in the system. Each lowmem zone gets
-a number of reserved free pages based proportionally on its size.
+of kilobytes free. The VM uses this number to compute a
+watermark[WMARK_MIN] value for each lowmem zone in the system.
+Each lowmem zone gets a number of reserved free pages based
+proportionally on its size.
Some minimal amount of memory is needed to satisfy PF_MEMALLOC
allocations; if you set this to lower than 1024KB, your system will
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/balance b/Documentation/vm/balance
index bd3d31bc491..c46e68cf934 100644
--- a/Documentation/vm/balance
+++ b/Documentation/vm/balance
@@ -75,15 +75,15 @@ Page stealing from process memory and shm is done if stealing the page would
alleviate memory pressure on any zone in the page's node that has fallen below
its watermark.
-pages_min/pages_low/pages_high/low_on_memory/zone_wake_kswapd: These are
-per-zone fields, used to determine when a zone needs to be balanced. When
-the number of pages falls below pages_min, the hysteric field low_on_memory
-gets set. This stays set till the number of free pages becomes pages_high.
-When low_on_memory is set, page allocation requests will try to free some
-pages in the zone (providing GFP_WAIT is set in the request). Orthogonal
-to this, is the decision to poke kswapd to free some zone pages. That
-decision is not hysteresis based, and is done when the number of free
-pages is below pages_low; in which case zone_wake_kswapd is also set.
+watemark[WMARK_MIN/WMARK_LOW/WMARK_HIGH]/low_on_memory/zone_wake_kswapd: These
+are per-zone fields, used to determine when a zone needs to be balanced. When
+the number of pages falls below watermark[WMARK_MIN], the hysteric field
+low_on_memory gets set. This stays set till the number of free pages becomes
+watermark[WMARK_HIGH]. When low_on_memory is set, page allocation requests will
+try to free some pages in the zone (providing GFP_WAIT is set in the request).
+Orthogonal to this, is the decision to poke kswapd to free some zone pages.
+That decision is not hysteresis based, and is done when the number of free
+pages is below watermark[WMARK_LOW]; in which case zone_wake_kswapd is also set.
(Good) Ideas that I have heard: