Commit Graph

56 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Denys Vlasenko 4a0da71b96 Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt: clarify vfs_cache_pressure description
Existing description is worded in a way which almost encourages setting of
vfs_cache_pressure above 100, possibly way above it.

Users are left in a dark what this numeric value is - an int?  a
percentage?  what the scale is?

As a result, we are getting reports about noticeable performance
degradation from users who have set vfs_cache_pressure to ridiculously
high values - because they thought there is no downside to it.

Via code inspection it's obvious that this value is treated as a
percentage.  This patch changes text to reflect this fact, and adds a
cautionary paragraph advising against setting vfs_cache_pressure sky high.

Signed-off-by: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-06-04 16:54:13 -07:00
Mel Gorman 4f9b16a647 mm: disable zone_reclaim_mode by default
When it was introduced, zone_reclaim_mode made sense as NUMA distances
punished and workloads were generally partitioned to fit into a NUMA
node.  NUMA machines are now common but few of the workloads are
NUMA-aware and it's routine to see major performance degradation due to
zone_reclaim_mode being enabled but relatively few can identify the
problem.

Those that require zone_reclaim_mode are likely to be able to detect
when it needs to be enabled and tune appropriately so lets have a
sensible default for the bulk of users.

This patch (of 2):

zone_reclaim_mode causes processes to prefer reclaiming memory from
local node instead of spilling over to other nodes.  This made sense
initially when NUMA machines were almost exclusively HPC and the
workload was partitioned into nodes.  The NUMA penalties were
sufficiently high to justify reclaiming the memory.  On current machines
and workloads it is often the case that zone_reclaim_mode destroys
performance but not all users know how to detect this.  Favour the
common case and disable it by default.  Users that are sophisticated
enough to know they need zone_reclaim_mode will detect it.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Reviewed-by: Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@cn.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-06-04 16:53:59 -07:00
Dave Hansen 5509a5d27b drop_caches: add some documentation and info message
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and a load of blog posts
suggesting that using "drop_caches" periodically keeps your system
running in "tip top shape".  Perhaps adding some kernel documentation
will increase the amount of accurate data on its use.

If we are not shrinking caches effectively, then we have real bugs.
Using drop_caches will simply mask the bugs and make them harder to
find, but certainly does not fix them, nor is it an appropriate
"workaround" to limit the size of the caches.  On the contrary, there
have been bug reports on issues that turned out to be misguided use of
cache dropping.

Dropping caches is a very drastic and disruptive operation that is good
for debugging and running tests, but if it creates bug reports from
production use, kernel developers should be aware of its use.

Add a bit more documentation about it, a syslog message to track down
abusers, and vmstat drop counters to help analyze problem reports.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: checkpatch fixes]
[hannes@cmpxchg.org: add runtime suppression control]
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Acked-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-04-03 16:21:04 -07:00
Aaron Tomlin 8582cb96b0 mm: document improved handling of swappiness==0
Prior to commit fe35004fbf ("mm: avoid swapping out with
swappiness==0") setting swappiness to 0, reclaim code could still evict
recently used user anonymous memory to swap even though there is a
significant amount of RAM used for page cache.

The behaviour of setting swappiness to 0 has since changed.  When set,
the reclaim code does not initiate swap until the amount of free pages
and file-backed pages, is less than the high water mark in a zone.

Let's update the documentation to reflect this.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: remove comma, per Randy]
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Bryn M. Reeves <bmr@redhat.com>
Cc: Satoru Moriya <satoru.moriya@hds.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-01-29 16:22:39 -08:00
Jerome Marchand 49f0ce5f92 mm: add overcommit_kbytes sysctl variable
Some applications that run on HPC clusters are designed around the
availability of RAM and the overcommit ratio is fine tuned to get the
maximum usage of memory without swapping.  With growing memory, the
1%-of-all-RAM grain provided by overcommit_ratio has become too coarse
for these workload (on a 2TB machine it represents no less than 20GB).

This patch adds the new overcommit_kbytes sysctl variable that allow a
much finer grain.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix nommu build]
Signed-off-by: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-01-21 16:19:44 -08:00
Zheng Liu 715ea41e60 mm: improve the description for dirty_background_ratio/dirty_ratio sysctl
Now dirty_background_ratio/dirty_ratio contains a percentage of total
avaiable memory, which contains free pages and reclaimable pages.  The
number of these pages is not equal to the number of total system memory.
But they are described as a percentage of total system memory in
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt.  So we need to fix them to avoid
misunderstanding.

Signed-off-by: Zheng Liu <wenqing.lz@taobao.com>
Cc: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-11-13 12:09:11 +09:00
Naoya Horiguchi 86cdb465cf mm: prepare to remove /proc/sys/vm/hugepages_treat_as_movable
Now hugepage migration is enabled, although restricted on pmd-based
hugepages for now (due to lack of testing.) So we should allocate
migratable hugepages from ZONE_MOVABLE if possible.

This patch makes GFP flags in hugepage allocation dependent on migration
support, not only the value of hugepages_treat_as_movable.  It provides no
change on the behavior for architectures which do not support hugepage
migration,

Signed-off-by: Naoya Horiguchi <n-horiguchi@ah.jp.nec.com>
Acked-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Wanpeng Li <liwanp@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Hillf Danton <dhillf@gmail.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: "Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-09-11 15:57:49 -07:00
Wanpeng Li f8f191f1ad mm/page_alloc: fix doc for numa_zonelist_order
The default zonelist order selecter will select "node" order if any nodes
DMA zone comprises greater than 70% of its local memory instead of 60%,
according to default_zonelist_order::low_kmem_size > total * 70/100.

Signed-off-by: Wanpeng Li <liwanp@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-07-09 10:33:23 -07:00
Andrew Shewmaker 4eeab4f558 mm: replace hardcoded 3% with admin_reserve_pages knob
Add an admin_reserve_kbytes knob to allow admins to change the hardcoded
memory reserve to something other than 3%, which may be multiple
gigabytes on large memory systems.  Only about 8MB is necessary to
enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are
required even when overcommit is disabled.

This affects OVERCOMMIT_GUESS and OVERCOMMIT_NEVER.

admin_reserve_kbytes is initialized to min(3% free pages, 8MB)

I arrived at 8MB by summing the RSS of sshd or login, bash, and top.

Please see first patch in this series for full background, motivation,
testing, and full changelog.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_admin_reserve() static]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 15:54:36 -07:00
Andrew Shewmaker c9b1d0981f mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve
Add user_reserve_kbytes knob.

Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to
min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages).  Only about 8MB is
necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred
MB are required even when overcommit is disabled.

user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB)

I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ...
then adding the RSS of each.

This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode.

Background

1. user reserve

__vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for
other applications when overcommit is disabled.  This was done so that a
user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process.  Without the
reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as:

bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory

2. admin reserve

Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both
overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes.  This was intended to prevent a
scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations.

Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve.

Motivation

The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current
memory sizes.

Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much.

When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered
"enterprise".  Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory
systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user
or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process.

I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a
specific type of application load:

 * single application system
 * one or few processes (e.g. one per core)
 * allocating all available memory
 * not initializing every page immediately
 * long running

I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load.  A long running job
sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation.  They
weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't
using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode.  These
clusters run diskless and have no swap.

However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much
memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for
example, almost 2GB out of 32GB.

The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with
one process per core.  I have repeatedly seen a set of processes
requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not
allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate.
For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core.  And
it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks.

Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful
by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory.

Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior
since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something
useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory.

Risks

* "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory"

  The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve
  that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set
  it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if
  they already have a shell prompt.

  Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3%
  reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible.

* root-cant-log-in problem

  The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows
  the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small.  They
  can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in.

  However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current
  behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink
  to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all
  available memory.

Alternatives

 * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory.

   Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead.

 * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves.

   The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending
   on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise.

 * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc.

   Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc.
   Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well.

The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low
overhead compared to cgroups.  The patches preserve current behavior where
3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't
shrink to an unusable size under pressure.  The code allows admins to tune
for embedded and enterprise usage.

FAQ

 * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed?
   What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0?

   Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting
   admin_reserve_kbytes too low.

   On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is:
     8MB for overcommit 'guess'
   128MB for overcommit 'never'

   admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB)

   So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust
   admin_reserve_pages.

 * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve?

   A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform
   recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum:

   sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.)

   For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS)
   because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery
   programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB.

   For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ)
   and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode
   forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations--
   even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for.
   On x86_64 this is about 128MB.

   When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as
   small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode.

   When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should
   tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each
   was safest in my testing.

 * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0?

   Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode.

   Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus
   admin_reserve_kbytes.

   However, they will easily see a message such as:

   "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory"

   And they won't be able to recover/kill their application.
   The admin should be able to recover the system if
   admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately.

 * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'?

   "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable
   pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root.

   "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable
   percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of
   free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a
   hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional
   applications.

 * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually
   writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available
   swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words,
   these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable?

   Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It
   does not take into account the memory that other applications have
   malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system.

Test Summary

There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess'
mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected.

Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never'
mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated
to a user application.

Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to
crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed.
This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer.

Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode
and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the
admin can.

With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode
and without swap can be configured to:

1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of
recoverability

2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to
ensure that a user cannot take down a system

Test Description

Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap

System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services
turned off. Caches were dropped before each test.

Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory
as reported by /proc/meminfo

In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100

Test Results

3.9.0-rc1-mm1

Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery
----------   ----   ----   -------------   ----   -------------   --------------
guess        yes    1      5432/5432       no     yes             yes
guess        yes    4      5444/5444       1      yes             yes
guess        no     1      5302/5449       no     yes             yes
guess        no     4      -               crash  no              no

never        yes    1      5460/5460       1      yes             yes
never        yes    4      5460/5460       1      yes             yes
never        no     1      5218/5432       no     no              yes
never        no     4      5203/5448       no     no              yes

3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves

User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable.

Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery
----------   ----   ----   -------------   ----   -------------   --------------
guess        yes    1      5419/5419       no     - yes           8MB yes
guess        yes    4      5436/5436       1      - yes           8MB yes
guess        no     1      5440/5440       *      - yes           8MB yes
guess        no     4      -               crash  - no            8MB no

* process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it

never        yes    1      5446/5446       no     10MB yes        20MB yes
never        yes    4      5456/5456       no     10MB yes        20MB yes
never        no     1      5387/5429       no     128MB no        8MB barely
never        no     1      5323/5428       no     226MB barely    8MB barely
never        no     1      5323/5428       no     226MB barely    8MB barely

never        no     1      5359/5448       no     10MB no         10MB barely

never        no     1      5323/5428       no     0MB no          10MB barely
never        no     1      5332/5428       no     0MB no          50MB yes
never        no     1      5293/5429       no     0MB no          90MB yes

never        no     1      5001/5427       no     230MB yes       338MB yes
never        no     4*     4998/5424       no     230MB yes       338MB yes

* more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB

Future Work

 - Test larger memory systems.

 - Test an embedded image.

 - Test other architectures.

 - Time malloc microbenchmarks.

 - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for
   each memory cgroup?

 - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars.
   Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb?
   Other places in the kernel do this.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 15:54:36 -07:00
Artem Bityutskiy 6601fac822 Documentation: fix the VM knobs descritpion WRT pdflush
The pdflush thread is long gone, however we still mention it incorrectly in the
kernel documentation. This patch fixes the situation.

Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <artem.bityutskiy@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
2012-08-04 12:15:09 +04:00
David Rientjes de34d965a8 mm, oom: replace some information in tasklist dump
The number of ptes and swap entries are used in the oom killer's badness
heuristic, so they should be shown in the tasklist dump.

This patch adds those fields and replaces cpu and oom_adj values that are
currently emitted.  Cpu isn't interesting and oom_adj is deprecated and
will be removed later this year, the same information is already displayed
as oom_score_adj which is used internally.

At the same time, make the documentation a little more clear to state this
information is helpful to determine why the oom killer chose the task it
did to kill.

Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2012-07-31 18:42:42 -07:00
Wanpeng Li 3965c9ae47 mm: prepare for removal of obsolete /proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads
Since per-BDI flusher threads were introduced in 2.6, the pdflush
mechanism is not used any more.  But the old interface exported through
/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads still exists and is obviously useless.

For back-compatibility, printk warning information and return 2 to notify
the users that the interface is removed.

Signed-off-by: Wanpeng Li <liwp@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2012-07-31 18:42:40 -07:00
Christian Ehrhardt df858fa827 documentation: update how page-cluster affects swap I/O
Fix of the documentation of /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster to match the
behavior of the code and add some comments about what the tunable will
change in that behavior.

Signed-off-by: Christian Ehrhardt <ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2012-07-31 18:42:39 -07:00
Paul Bolle 5a3016a615 doc: fix 3 typos in sysctl/vm.txt
Signed-off-by: Paul Bolle <pebolle@tiscali.nl>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2011-04-06 07:09:35 -07:00
Andrea Righi abffc0207f doc: clarify the behaviour of dirty_ratio/dirty_bytes
When dirty_ratio or dirty_bytes is written the other parameter is disabled
and set to 0 (in dirty_bytes_handler() / dirty_ratio_handler()).

We do the same for dirty_background_ratio and dirty_background_bytes.

However, in the sysctl documentation, we say that the counterpart becomes
a function of the old value, that is not correct.

Clarify the documentation reporting the actual behaviour.

Reviewed-by: Greg Thelen <gthelen@google.com>
Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <arighi@develer.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-10-27 18:03:08 -07:00
David Rientjes ad915c432e oom: enable oom tasklist dump by default
The oom killer tasklist dump, enabled with the oom_dump_tasks sysctl, is
very helpful information in diagnosing why a user's task has been killed.
It emits useful information such as each eligible thread's memory usage
that can determine why the system is oom, so it should be enabled by
default.

Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Acked-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-08-09 20:44:56 -07:00
Kulikov Vasiliy 2174efb6a2 Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt typo
Fix trivial typo: duplicated word.

Signed-off-by: Kulikov Vasiliy <segooon@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2010-06-28 13:59:28 +02:00
Mel Gorman 5e77190580 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 <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-05-25 08:06:59 -07:00
Mel Gorman 76ab0f530e mm: compaction: add /proc trigger for memory compaction
Add a proc file /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory.  When an arbitrary value is
written to the file, all zones are compacted.  The expected user of such a
trigger is a job scheduler that prepares the system before the target
application runs.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-05-25 08:06:59 -07:00
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki daaf1e6887 memcg: handle panic_on_oom=always case
Presently, if panic_on_oom=2, the whole system panics even if the oom
happend in some special situation (as cpuset, mempolicy....).  Then,
panic_on_oom=2 means painc_on_oom_always.

Now, memcg doesn't check panic_on_oom flag. This patch adds a check.

BTW, how it's useful ?

kdump+panic_on_oom=2 is the last tool to investigate what happens in
oom-ed system.  When a task is killed, the sysytem recovers and there will
be few hint to know what happnes.  In mission critical system, oom should
never happen.  Then, panic_on_oom=2+kdump is useful to avoid next OOM by
knowing precise information via snapshot.

TODO:
 - For memcg, it's for isolate system's memory usage, oom-notiifer and
   freeze_at_oom (or rest_at_oom) should be implemented. Then, management
   daemon can do similar jobs (as kdump) or taking snapshot per cgroup.

Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-03-12 15:52:37 -08:00
André Goddard Rosa af901ca181 tree-wide: fix assorted typos all over the place
That is "success", "unknown", "through", "performance", "[re|un]mapping"
, "access", "default", "reasonable", "[con]currently", "temperature"
, "channel", "[un]used", "application", "example","hierarchy", "therefore"
, "[over|under]flow", "contiguous", "threshold", "enough" and others.

Signed-off-by: André Goddard Rosa <andre.goddard@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-12-04 15:39:55 +01:00
Linus Torvalds db16826367 Merge branch 'hwpoison' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ak/linux-mce-2.6
* 'hwpoison' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ak/linux-mce-2.6: (21 commits)
  HWPOISON: Enable error_remove_page on btrfs
  HWPOISON: Add simple debugfs interface to inject hwpoison on arbitary PFNs
  HWPOISON: Add madvise() based injector for hardware poisoned pages v4
  HWPOISON: Enable error_remove_page for NFS
  HWPOISON: Enable .remove_error_page for migration aware file systems
  HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7
  HWPOISON: Add PR_MCE_KILL prctl to control early kill behaviour per process
  HWPOISON: shmem: call set_page_dirty() with locked page
  HWPOISON: Define a new error_remove_page address space op for async truncation
  HWPOISON: Add invalidate_inode_page
  HWPOISON: Refactor truncate to allow direct truncating of page v2
  HWPOISON: check and isolate corrupted free pages v2
  HWPOISON: Handle hardware poisoned pages in try_to_unmap
  HWPOISON: Use bitmask/action code for try_to_unmap behaviour
  HWPOISON: x86: Add VM_FAULT_HWPOISON handling to x86 page fault handler v2
  HWPOISON: Add poison check to page fault handling
  HWPOISON: Add basic support for poisoned pages in fault handler v3
  HWPOISON: Add new SIGBUS error codes for hardware poison signals
  HWPOISON: Add support for poison swap entries v2
  HWPOISON: Export some rmap vma locking to outside world
  ...
2009-09-24 07:53:22 -07:00
Jan Kara 55c37a840d vm: document that setting vfs_cache_pressure to 0 isn't a good idea
Reported-by: Christian Thaeter <ct@pipapo.org>
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:30 -07:00
Andi Kleen 6a46079cf5 HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7
Add the high level memory handler that poisons pages
that got corrupted by hardware (typically by a two bit flip in a DIMM
or a cache) on the Linux level. The goal is to prevent everyone
from accessing these pages in the future.

This done at the VM level by marking a page hwpoisoned
and doing the appropriate action based on the type of page
it is.

The code that does this is portable and lives in mm/memory-failure.c

To quote the overview comment:

High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the
hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache
failure.

This focuses on pages detected as corrupted in the background.
When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently
running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies
that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to
just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead
when that happens another machine check will happen.

Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part
here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM
users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere,
possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code
has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking
rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the
error handling takes potentially a long time.

Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non
linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not
been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case
for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected
to be rare we hope we can get away with this.

There are in principle two strategies to kill processes on poison:
- just unmap the data and wait for an actual reference before
killing
- kill as soon as corruption is detected.
Both have advantages and disadvantages and should be used
in different situations. Right now both are implemented and can
be switched with a new sysctl vm.memory_failure_early_kill
The default is early kill.

The patch does some rmap data structure walking on its own to collect
processes to kill. This is unusual because normally all rmap data structure
knowledge is in rmap.c only. I put it here for now to keep
everything together and rmap knowledge has been seeping out anyways

Includes contributions from Johannes Weiner, Chris Mason, Fengguang Wu,
Nick Piggin (who did a lot of great work) and others.

Cc: npiggin@suse.de
Cc: riel@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
2009-09-16 11:50:15 +02:00
Mel Gorman 90afa5de6f 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>
2009-06-16 19:47:45 -07:00
Mel Gorman 418589663d 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>
2009-06-16 19:47:35 -07:00
Matt LaPlante 19f5946001 trivial: Miscellaneous documentation typo fixes
Fix various typos in documentation txts.

Signed-off-by: Matt LaPlante <kernel1@cyberdogtech.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-06-12 18:01:47 +02:00
Jens Axboe cd17cbfda0 Revert "mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads"
This reverts commit fafd688e4c.

Work is progressing to switch away from pdflush as the process backing
for flushing out dirty data. So it seems pointless to add more knobs
to control pdflush threads. The original author of the patch did not
have any specific use cases for adding the knobs, so we can easily
revert this before 2.6.30 to avoid having to maintain this API
forever.

Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-05-15 11:32:24 +02:00
Andrea Righi 9e4a5bda89 mm: prevent divide error for small values of vm_dirty_bytes
Avoid setting less than two pages for vm_dirty_bytes: this is necessary to
avoid potential division by 0 (like the following) in get_dirty_limits().

[   49.951610] divide error: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP
[   49.952195] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent
[   49.952195] CPU 1
[   49.952195] Modules linked in: pcspkr
[   49.952195] Pid: 3064, comm: dd Not tainted 2.6.30-rc3 #1
[   49.952195] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff802d39a9>]  [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0
[   49.952195] RSP: 0018:ffff88001de03a98  EFLAGS: 00010202
[   49.952195] RAX: 00000000000000c0 RBX: ffff88001de03b80 RCX: 28f5c28f5c28f5c3
[   49.952195] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000000000c0 RDI: 0000000000000000
[   49.952195] RBP: ffff88001de03ae8 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000
[   49.952195] R10: ffff88001ddda9a0 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 0000000000000001
[   49.952195] R13: ffff88001fbc8218 R14: ffff88001de03b70 R15: ffff88001de03b78
[   49.952195] FS:  00007fe9a435b6f0(0000) GS:ffff8800025d9000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
[   49.952195] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[   49.952195] CR2: 00007fe9a39ab000 CR3: 000000001de38000 CR4: 00000000000006e0
[   49.952195] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000
[   49.952195] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400
[   49.952195] Process dd (pid: 3064, threadinfo ffff88001de02000, task ffff88001ddda250)
[   49.952195] Stack:
[   49.952195]  ffff88001fa0de00 ffff88001f2dbd70 ffff88001f9fe800 000080b900000000
[   49.952195]  00000000000000c0 ffff8800027a6100 0000000000000400 ffff88001fbc8218
[   49.952195]  0000000000000000 0000000000000600 ffff88001de03bb8 ffffffff802d3ed7
[   49.952195] Call Trace:
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff802d3ed7>] balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr+0x1d7/0x3f0
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff80368f8e>] ? ext3_writeback_write_end+0x9e/0x120
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff802cc7df>] generic_file_buffered_write+0x12f/0x330
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff802cce8d>] __generic_file_aio_write_nolock+0x26d/0x460
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff802cda32>] ? generic_file_aio_write+0x52/0xd0
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff802cda49>] generic_file_aio_write+0x69/0xd0
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff80365fa6>] ext3_file_write+0x26/0xc0
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff803034d1>] do_sync_write+0xf1/0x140
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff80290d1a>] ? get_lock_stats+0x2a/0x60
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff80280730>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff8030411b>] vfs_write+0xcb/0x190
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff803042d0>] sys_write+0x50/0x90
[   49.952195]  [<ffffffff8022ff6b>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
[   49.952195] Code: 00 00 00 2b 05 09 1c 17 01 48 89 c6 49 0f af f4 48 c1 ee 02 48 89 f0 48 f7 e1 48 89 d6 31 d2 48 c1 ee 02 48 0f af 75 d0 48 89 f0 <48> f7 f7 41 8b 95 ac 01 00 00 48 89 c7 49 0f af d4 48 c1 ea 02
[   49.952195] RIP  [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0
[   49.952195]  RSP <ffff88001de03a98>
[   50.096523] ---[ end trace 008d7aa02f244d7b ]---

Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-05-02 15:36:10 -07:00
Peter W Morreale fafd688e4c mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads
Add /proc entries to give the admin the ability to control the minimum and
maximum number of pdflush threads.  This allows finer control of pdflush
on both large and small machines.

The rationale is simply one size does not fit all.  Admins on large and/or
small systems may want to tune the min/max pdflush thread count to best
suit their needs.  Right now the min/max is hardcoded to 2/8.  While
probably a fair estimate for smaller machines, large machines with large
numbers of CPUs and large numbers of filesystems/block devices may benefit
from larger numbers of threads working on different block devices.

Even if the background flushing algorithm is radically changed, it is
still likely that multiple threads will be involved and admins would still
desire finer control on the min/max other than to have to recompile the
kernel.

The patch adds '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_min' and
'/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_max' with r/w permissions.

The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_min is 1 and the maximum value is
the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_max.  This minimum is required
since additional thread creation is performed in a pdflush thread itself.

The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_max is the current value of
nr_pdflush_threads_min and the maximum value can be 1000.

Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt is also updated.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment, fix whitespace, use __read_mostly]
Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com>
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-07 08:31:03 -07:00
Peter W Morreale db0fb1848a Update of Documentation: vm.txt and proc.txt
Update Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt and Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt.
 More specifically, the section on /proc/sys/vm in
Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt was removed and a link to
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt added.

Most of the verbiage from proc.txt was simply moved in vm.txt, with new
addtional text for "swappiness" and "stat_interval".

Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com>
Acked-by: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-15 16:39:35 -08:00
Paul Mundt dd8632a12e NOMMU: Make mmap allocation page trimming behaviour configurable.
NOMMU mmap allocates a piece of memory for an mmap that's rounded up in size to
the nearest power-of-2 number of pages.  Currently it then discards the excess
pages back to the page allocator, making that memory available for use by other
things.  This can, however, cause greater amount of fragmentation.

To counter this, a sysctl is added in order to fine-tune the trimming
behaviour.  The default behaviour remains to trim pages aggressively, while
this can either be disabled completely or set to a higher page-granular
watermark in order to have finer-grained control.

vm region vm_top bits taken from an earlier patch by David Howells.

Signed-off-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Tested-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi@gmail.com>
2009-01-08 12:04:47 +00:00
David Rientjes 2da02997e0 mm: add dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes sysctls
This change introduces two new sysctls to /proc/sys/vm:
dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes.

dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_background_ratio and
dirty_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_ratio.

With growing memory capacities of individual machines, it's no longer
sufficient to specify dirty thresholds as a percentage of the amount of
dirtyable memory over the entire system.

dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes specify quantities of memory, in
bytes, that represent the dirty limits for the entire system.  If either
of these values is set, its value represents the amount of dirty memory
that is needed to commence either background or direct writeback.

When a `bytes' or `ratio' file is written, its counterpart becomes a
function of the written value.  For example, if dirty_bytes is written to
be 8096, 8K of memory is required to commence direct writeback.
dirty_ratio is then functionally equivalent to 8K / the amount of
dirtyable memory:

	dirtyable_memory = free pages + mapped pages + file cache

	dirty_background_bytes = dirty_background_ratio * dirtyable_memory
		-or-
	dirty_background_ratio = dirty_background_bytes / dirtyable_memory

		AND

	dirty_bytes = dirty_ratio * dirtyable_memory
		-or-
	dirty_ratio = dirty_bytes / dirtyable_memory

Only one of dirty_background_bytes and dirty_background_ratio may be
specified at a time, and only one of dirty_bytes and dirty_ratio may be
specified.  When one sysctl is written, the other appears as 0 when read.

The `bytes' files operate on a page size granularity since dirty limits
are compared with ZVC values, which are in page units.

Prior to this change, the minimum dirty_ratio was 5 as implemented by
get_dirty_limits() although /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio would show any user
written value between 0 and 100.  This restriction is maintained, but
dirty_bytes has a lower limit of only one page.

Also prior to this change, the dirty_background_ratio could not equal or
exceed dirty_ratio.  This restriction is maintained in addition to
restricting dirty_background_bytes.  If either background threshold equals
or exceeds that of the dirty threshold, it is implicitly set to half the
dirty threshold.

Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-06 15:59:03 -08:00
Matt LaPlante d91958815d Documentation cleanup: trivial misspelling, punctuation, and grammar corrections.
Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-07-26 12:00:06 -07:00
David Rientjes fef1bdd68c oom: add sysctl to enable task memory dump
Adds a new sysctl, 'oom_dump_tasks', that enables the kernel to produce a
dump of all system tasks (excluding kernel threads) when performing an
OOM-killing.  Information includes pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, cpu,
oom_adj score, and name.

This is helpful for determining why there was an OOM condition and which
rogue task caused it.

It is configurable so that large systems, such as those with several
thousand tasks, do not incur a performance penalty associated with dumping
data they may not desire.

If an OOM was triggered as a result of a memory controller, the tasklist
shall be filtered to exclude tasks that are not a member of the same
cgroup.

Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-07 08:42:19 -08:00
Bron Gondwana 195cf453d2 mm/page-writeback: highmem_is_dirtyable option
Add vm.highmem_is_dirtyable toggle

A 32 bit machine with HIGHMEM64 enabled running DCC has an MMAPed file of
approximately 2Gb size which contains a hash format that is written
randomly by the dbclean process.  On 2.6.16 this process took a few
minutes.  With lowmem only accounting of dirty ratios, this takes about 12
hours of 100% disk IO, all random writes.

Include a toggle in /proc/sys/vm/highmem_is_dirtyable which can be set to 1 to
add the highmem back to the total available memory count.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: Fix the CONFIG_DETECT_SOFTLOCKUP=y build]
Signed-off-by: Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm>
Cc: Ethan Solomita <solo@google.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: WU Fengguang <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-05 09:44:18 -08:00
Nishanth Aravamudan d5dbac87b4 Documentation: update hugetlb information
The hugetlb documentation has gotten a bit out of sync with the current code.
Updated the sysctl file to refer to Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt.  Update
that file to contain the current state of affairs (with the newer named sysctl
in place).

Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Adam Litke <agl@us.ibm.com>
Cc: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-12-17 19:28:17 -08:00
Pavel Machek 24950898ff vm.txt: document min_free_pages as critical for correctness
min_free_pages is critical for correctness, document it as such.

Signed-off-by: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17 08:43:06 -07:00
David Rientjes fe071d7e8a oom: add oom_kill_allocating_task sysctl
Adds a new sysctl, 'oom_kill_allocating_task', which will automatically kill
the OOM-triggering task instead of scanning through the tasklist to find a
memory-hogging target.  This is helpful for systems with an insanely large
number of tasks where scanning the tasklist significantly degrades
performance.

Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17 08:42:46 -07:00
Mel Gorman ed7ed36517 handle kernelcore=: generic
This patch adds the kernelcore= parameter for x86.

Once all patches are applied, a new command-line parameter exist and a new
sysctl.  This patch adds the necessary documentation.

From: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com>

  When "kernelcore" boot option is specified, kernel can't boot up on ia64
  because of an infinite loop.  In addition, the parsing code can be handled
  in an architecture-independent manner.

  This patch uses common code to handle the kernelcore= parameter.  It is
  only available to architectures that support arch-independent zone-sizing
  (i.e.  define CONFIG_ARCH_POPULATES_NODE_MAP).  Other architectures will
  ignore the boot parameter.

[bunk@stusta.de: make cmdline_parse_kernelcore() static]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-17 10:22:59 -07:00
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki f0c0b2b808 change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic
Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6.

This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable.
Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based.

[Default Order]
The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically.

[Node-based Order]
This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter.
Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones
(ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion.
IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist.
current 2.6.21 kernel uses this.

Pros.
 * A user can expect local memory as much as possible.
Cons.
 * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL.

Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL
because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality.

(example)
assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL.

*node(0)'s memory allocation order:

 node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL.

*node(1)'s memory allocation order:

 node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA.

[Zone-based order]
This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter.
Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone
never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion.
IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist.

Pros.
 * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted.
Cons.
 * memory locality may not be best.

(example)
assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL.

*node(0)'s memory allocation order:

 node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA.

*node(1)'s memory allocation order:

 node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA.

bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd.

command:
%echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order

Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order.

command:
%echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order

Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order.

Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes.

[Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix]
Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16 09:05:35 -07:00
Eric Paris ed03218951 security: Protection for exploiting null dereference using mmap
Add a new security check on mmap operations to see if the user is attempting
to mmap to low area of the address space.  The amount of space protected is
indicated by the new proc tunable /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr and defaults to
0, preserving existing behavior.

This patch uses a new SELinux security class "memprotect."  Policy already
contains a number of allow rules like a_t self:process * (unconfined_t being
one of them) which mean that putting this check in the process class (its
best current fit) would make it useless as all user processes, which we also
want to protect against, would be allowed. By taking the memprotect name of
the new class it will also make it possible for us to move some of the other
memory protect permissions out of 'process' and into the new class next time
we bump the policy version number (which I also think is a good future idea)

Acked-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
Acked-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2007-07-11 22:52:29 -04:00
Yasunori Goto 2b744c01a5 mm: fix handling of panic_on_oom when cpusets are in use
The current panic_on_oom may not work if there is a process using
cpusets/mempolicy, because other nodes' memory may remain.  But some people
want failover by panic ASAP even if they are used.  This patch makes new
setting for its request.

This is tested on my ia64 box which has 3 nodes.

Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Benjamin LaHaise <bcrl@kvack.org>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Cc: Ethan Solomita <solo@google.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-07 12:12:55 -07:00
Matt LaPlante 5d3f083d8f Fix typos in /Documentation : Misc
This patch fixes typos in various Documentation txts. The patch addresses some
misc words.

Signed-off-by: Matt LaPlante <kernel1@cyberdogtech.com>
Acked-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
2006-11-30 05:21:10 +01:00
Christoph Lameter 0ff38490c8 [PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim
Currently one can enable slab reclaim by setting an explicit option in
/proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode.  Slab reclaim is then used as a final
option if the freeing of unmapped file backed pages is not enough to free
enough pages to allow a local allocation.

However, that means that the slab can grow excessively and that most memory
of a node may be used by slabs.  We have had a case where a machine with
46GB of memory was using 40-42GB for slab.  Zone reclaim was effective in
dealing with pagecache pages.  However, slab reclaim was only done during
global reclaim (which is a bit rare on NUMA systems).

This patch implements slab reclaim during zone reclaim.  Zone reclaim
occurs if there is a danger of an off node allocation.  At that point we

1. Shrink the per node page cache if the number of pagecache
   pages is more than min_unmapped_ratio percent of pages in a zone.

2. Shrink the slab cache if the number of the nodes reclaimable slab pages
   (patch depends on earlier one that implements that counter)
   are more than min_slab_ratio (a new /proc/sys/vm tunable).

The shrinking of the slab cache is a bit problematic since it is not node
specific.  So we simply calculate what point in the slab we want to reach
(current per node slab use minus the number of pages that neeed to be
allocated) and then repeately run the global reclaim until that is
unsuccessful or we have reached the limit.  I hope we will have zone based
slab reclaim at some point which will make that easier.

The default for the min_slab_ratio is 5%

Also remove the slab option from /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode.

[akpm@osdl.org: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:51 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 9614634fe6 [PATCH] ZVC/zone_reclaim: Leave 1% of unmapped pagecache pages for file I/O
It turns out that it is advantageous to leave a small portion of unmapped file
backed pages if all of a zone's pages (or almost all pages) are allocated and
so the page allocator has to go off-node.

This allows recently used file I/O buffers to stay on the node and
reduces the times that zone reclaim is invoked if file I/O occurs
when we run out of memory in a zone.

The problem is that zone reclaim runs too frequently when the page cache is
used for file I/O (read write and therefore unmapped pages!) alone and we have
almost all pages of the zone allocated.  Zone reclaim may remove 32 unmapped
pages.  File I/O will use these pages for the next read/write requests and the
unmapped pages increase.  After the zone has filled up again zone reclaim will
remove it again after only 32 pages.  This cycle is too inefficient and there
are potentially too many zone reclaim cycles.

With the 1% boundary we may still remove all unmapped pages for file I/O in
zone reclaim pass.  However.  it will take a large number of read and writes
to get back to 1% again where we trigger zone reclaim again.

The zone reclaim 2.6.16/17 does not show this behavior because we have a 30
second timeout.

[akpm@osdl.org: rename the /proc file and the variable]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-07-03 15:26:59 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 34aa1330f9 [PATCH] zoned vm counters: zone_reclaim: remove /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_interval
The zone_reclaim_interval was necessary because we were not able to determine
how many unmapped pages exist in a zone.  Therefore we had to scan in
intervals to figure out if any pages were unmapped.

With the zoned counters and NR_ANON_PAGES we now know the number of pagecache
pages and the number of mapped pages in a zone.  So we can simply skip the
reclaim if there is an insufficient number of unmapped pages.  We use
SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX as the boundary.

Drop all support for /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_interval.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:35 -07:00
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki fadd8fbd15 [PATCH] support for panic at OOM
This patch adds panic_on_oom sysctl under sys.vm.

When sysctl vm.panic_on_oom = 1, the kernel panics intead of killing rogue
processes.  And if vm.panic_on_oom is 0 the kernel will do oom_kill() in
the same way as it does today.  Of course, the default value is 0 and only
root can modifies it.

In general, oom_killer works well and kill rogue processes.  So the whole
system can survive.  But there are environments where panic is preferable
rather than kill some processes.

Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-23 07:42:47 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 2a16e3f4b0 [PATCH] Reclaim slab during zone reclaim
If large amounts of zone memory are used by empty slabs then zone_reclaim
becomes uneffective.  This patch shakes the slab a bit.

The problem with this patch is that the slab reclaim is not containable to a
zone.  Thus slab reclaim may affect the whole system and be extremely slow.
This also means that we cannot determine how many pages were freed in this
zone.  Thus we need to go off node for at least one allocation.

The functionality is disabled by default.

We could modify the shrinkers to take a zone parameter but that would be quite
invasive.  Better ideas are welcome.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-02-01 08:53:16 -08:00