diff options
author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 18:20:36 -0400 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 18:20:36 -0400 |
commit | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 (patch) | |
tree | 0bba044c4ce775e45a88a51686b5d9f90697ea9d /Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting |
Linux-2.6.12-rc2v2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting | 73 |
1 files changed, 73 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting b/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..21c7b1f8f32b --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting | |||
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1 | The Linux kernel supports the following overcommit handling modes | ||
2 | |||
3 | 0 - Heuristic overcommit handling. Obvious overcommits of | ||
4 | address space are refused. Used for a typical system. It | ||
5 | ensures a seriously wild allocation fails while allowing | ||
6 | overcommit to reduce swap usage. root is allowed to | ||
7 | allocate slighly more memory in this mode. This is the | ||
8 | default. | ||
9 | |||
10 | 1 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific | ||
11 | applications. | ||
12 | |||
13 | 2 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit | ||
14 | for the system is not permitted to exceed swap + a | ||
15 | configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. | ||
16 | Depending on the percentage you use, in most situations | ||
17 | this means a process will not be killed while accessing | ||
18 | pages but will receive errors on memory allocation as | ||
19 | appropriate. | ||
20 | |||
21 | The overcommit policy is set via the sysctl `vm.overcommit_memory'. | ||
22 | |||
23 | The overcommit percentage is set via `vm.overcommit_ratio'. | ||
24 | |||
25 | The current overcommit limit and amount committed are viewable in | ||
26 | /proc/meminfo as CommitLimit and Committed_AS respectively. | ||
27 | |||
28 | Gotchas | ||
29 | ------- | ||
30 | |||
31 | The C language stack growth does an implicit mremap. If you want absolute | ||
32 | guarantees and run close to the edge you MUST mmap your stack for the | ||
33 | largest size you think you will need. For typical stack usage this does | ||
34 | not matter much but it's a corner case if you really really care | ||
35 | |||
36 | In mode 2 the MAP_NORESERVE flag is ignored. | ||
37 | |||
38 | |||
39 | How It Works | ||
40 | ------------ | ||
41 | |||
42 | The overcommit is based on the following rules | ||
43 | |||
44 | For a file backed map | ||
45 | SHARED or READ-only - 0 cost (the file is the map not swap) | ||
46 | PRIVATE WRITABLE - size of mapping per instance | ||
47 | |||
48 | For an anonymous or /dev/zero map | ||
49 | SHARED - size of mapping | ||
50 | PRIVATE READ-only - 0 cost (but of little use) | ||
51 | PRIVATE WRITABLE - size of mapping per instance | ||
52 | |||
53 | Additional accounting | ||
54 | Pages made writable copies by mmap | ||
55 | shmfs memory drawn from the same pool | ||
56 | |||
57 | Status | ||
58 | ------ | ||
59 | |||
60 | o We account mmap memory mappings | ||
61 | o We account mprotect changes in commit | ||
62 | o We account mremap changes in size | ||
63 | o We account brk | ||
64 | o We account munmap | ||
65 | o We report the commit status in /proc | ||
66 | o Account and check on fork | ||
67 | o Review stack handling/building on exec | ||
68 | o SHMfs accounting | ||
69 | o Implement actual limit enforcement | ||
70 | |||
71 | To Do | ||
72 | ----- | ||
73 | o Account ptrace pages (this is hard) | ||