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authorDavid Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>2007-05-06 17:49:24 -0400
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2007-05-07 15:12:52 -0400
commitb813e931b4c8235bb42e301096ea97dbdee3e8fe (patch)
treef8182687bffe8e3b95bac69b2cc7fdfe674ddc53 /Documentation/sgi-visws.txt
parentf79f177c25016647cc92ffac8afa7cb96ce47011 (diff)
smaps: add clear_refs file to clear reference
Adds /proc/pid/clear_refs. When any non-zero number is written to this file, pte_mkold() and ClearPageReferenced() is called for each pte and its corresponding page, respectively, in that task's VMAs. This file is only writable by the user who owns the task. It is now possible to measure _approximately_ how much memory a task is using by clearing the reference bits with echo 1 > /proc/pid/clear_refs and checking the reference count for each VMA from the /proc/pid/smaps output at a measured time interval. For example, to observe the approximate change in memory footprint for a task, write a script that clears the references (echo 1 > /proc/pid/clear_refs), sleeps, and then greps for Pgs_Referenced and extracts the size in kB. Add the sizes for each VMA together for the total referenced footprint. Moments later, repeat the process and observe the difference. For example, using an efficient Mozilla: accumulated time referenced memory ---------------- ----------------- 0 s 408 kB 1 s 408 kB 2 s 556 kB 3 s 1028 kB 4 s 872 kB 5 s 1956 kB 6 s 416 kB 7 s 1560 kB 8 s 2336 kB 9 s 1044 kB 10 s 416 kB This is a valuable tool to get an approximate measurement of the memory footprint for a task. Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Cc: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fixes] [mpm@selenic.com: rename for_each_pmd] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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