diff options
author | Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> | 2009-06-16 18:33:20 -0400 |
---|---|---|
committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2009-06-16 22:47:45 -0400 |
commit | 90afa5de6f3fa89a733861e843377302479fcf7e (patch) | |
tree | 2870878fa3361c27551b5a18c4732073ae1432bd /Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | |
parent | 84a892456046921a40646114deed65e2df93a1bc (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.txt | 12 |
1 files changed, 8 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt index 0ea5adbc5b16..c4de6359d440 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | |||
@@ -315,10 +315,14 @@ min_unmapped_ratio: | |||
315 | 315 | ||
316 | This is available only on NUMA kernels. | 316 | This is available only on NUMA kernels. |
317 | 317 | ||
318 | A percentage of the total pages in each zone. Zone reclaim will only | 318 | This is a percentage of the total pages in each zone. Zone reclaim will |
319 | occur if more than this percentage of pages are file backed and unmapped. | 319 | only occur if more than this percentage of pages are in a state that |
320 | This is to insure that a minimal amount of local pages is still available for | 320 | zone_reclaim_mode allows to be reclaimed. |
321 | file I/O even if the node is overallocated. | 321 | |
322 | If zone_reclaim_mode has the value 4 OR'd, then the percentage is compared | ||
323 | against all file-backed unmapped pages including swapcache pages and tmpfs | ||
324 | files. Otherwise, only unmapped pages backed by normal files but not tmpfs | ||
325 | files and similar are considered. | ||
322 | 326 | ||
323 | The default is 1 percent. | 327 | The default is 1 percent. |
324 | 328 | ||