From 5e7719058079a1423ccce56148b0aaa56b2df821 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mel Gorman Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 14:32:31 -0700 Subject: mm: compaction: add a tunable that decides when memory should be compacted and when it should be reclaimed The kernel applies some heuristics when deciding if memory should be compacted or reclaimed to satisfy a high-order allocation. One of these is based on the fragmentation. If the index is below 500, memory will not be compacted. This choice is arbitrary and not based on data. To help optimise the system and set a sensible default for this value, this patch adds a sysctl extfrag_threshold. The kernel will only compact memory if the fragmentation index is above the extfrag_threshold. [randy.dunlap@oracle.com: Fix build errors when proc fs is not configured] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap Cc: Rik van Riel Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro Cc: Christoph Lameter Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | 15 +++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) (limited to 'Documentation') diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt index 56dd29b97a9..5fdbb612aeb 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt @@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm: - dirty_ratio - dirty_writeback_centisecs - drop_caches +- extfrag_threshold - hugepages_treat_as_movable - hugetlb_shm_group - laptop_mode @@ -149,6 +150,20 @@ user should run `sync' first. ============================================================== +extfrag_threshold + +This parameter affects whether the kernel will compact memory or direct +reclaim to satisfy a high-order allocation. /proc/extfrag_index shows what +the fragmentation index for each order is in each zone in the system. Values +tending towards 0 imply allocations would fail due to lack of memory, +values towards 1000 imply failures are due to fragmentation and -1 implies +that the allocation will succeed as long as watermarks are met. + +The kernel will not compact memory in a zone if the +fragmentation index is <= extfrag_threshold. The default value is 500. + +============================================================== + hugepages_treat_as_movable This parameter is only useful when kernelcore= is specified at boot time to -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2