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-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-mm-cleancache | 11 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/cleancache.txt | 278 |
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diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-mm-cleancache b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-mm-cleancache new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..662ae646ea12 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-mm-cleancache | |||
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1 | What: /sys/kernel/mm/cleancache/ | ||
2 | Date: April 2011 | ||
3 | Contact: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com> | ||
4 | Description: | ||
5 | /sys/kernel/mm/cleancache/ contains a number of files which | ||
6 | record a count of various cleancache operations | ||
7 | (sum across all filesystems): | ||
8 | succ_gets | ||
9 | failed_gets | ||
10 | puts | ||
11 | flushes | ||
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/cleancache.txt b/Documentation/vm/cleancache.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..36c367c73084 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/cleancache.txt | |||
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1 | MOTIVATION | ||
2 | |||
3 | Cleancache is a new optional feature provided by the VFS layer that | ||
4 | potentially dramatically increases page cache effectiveness for | ||
5 | many workloads in many environments at a negligible cost. | ||
6 | |||
7 | Cleancache can be thought of as a page-granularity victim cache for clean | ||
8 | pages that the kernel's pageframe replacement algorithm (PFRA) would like | ||
9 | to keep around, but can't since there isn't enough memory. So when the | ||
10 | PFRA "evicts" a page, it first attempts to use cleancache code to | ||
11 | put the data contained in that page into "transcendent memory", memory | ||
12 | that is not directly accessible or addressable by the kernel and is | ||
13 | of unknown and possibly time-varying size. | ||
14 | |||
15 | Later, when a cleancache-enabled filesystem wishes to access a page | ||
16 | in a file on disk, it first checks cleancache to see if it already | ||
17 | contains it; if it does, the page of data is copied into the kernel | ||
18 | and a disk access is avoided. | ||
19 | |||
20 | Transcendent memory "drivers" for cleancache are currently implemented | ||
21 | in Xen (using hypervisor memory) and zcache (using in-kernel compressed | ||
22 | memory) and other implementations are in development. | ||
23 | |||
24 | FAQs are included below. | ||
25 | |||
26 | IMPLEMENTATION OVERVIEW | ||
27 | |||
28 | A cleancache "backend" that provides transcendent memory registers itself | ||
29 | to the kernel's cleancache "frontend" by calling cleancache_register_ops, | ||
30 | passing a pointer to a cleancache_ops structure with funcs set appropriately. | ||
31 | Note that cleancache_register_ops returns the previous settings so that | ||
32 | chaining can be performed if desired. The functions provided must conform to | ||
33 | certain semantics as follows: | ||
34 | |||
35 | Most important, cleancache is "ephemeral". Pages which are copied into | ||
36 | cleancache have an indefinite lifetime which is completely unknowable | ||
37 | by the kernel and so may or may not still be in cleancache at any later time. | ||
38 | Thus, as its name implies, cleancache is not suitable for dirty pages. | ||
39 | Cleancache has complete discretion over what pages to preserve and what | ||
40 | pages to discard and when. | ||
41 | |||
42 | Mounting a cleancache-enabled filesystem should call "init_fs" to obtain a | ||
43 | pool id which, if positive, must be saved in the filesystem's superblock; | ||
44 | a negative return value indicates failure. A "put_page" will copy a | ||
45 | (presumably about-to-be-evicted) page into cleancache and associate it with | ||
46 | the pool id, a file key, and a page index into the file. (The combination | ||
47 | of a pool id, a file key, and an index is sometimes called a "handle".) | ||
48 | A "get_page" will copy the page, if found, from cleancache into kernel memory. | ||
49 | A "flush_page" will ensure the page no longer is present in cleancache; | ||
50 | a "flush_inode" will flush all pages associated with the specified file; | ||
51 | and, when a filesystem is unmounted, a "flush_fs" will flush all pages in | ||
52 | all files specified by the given pool id and also surrender the pool id. | ||
53 | |||
54 | An "init_shared_fs", like init_fs, obtains a pool id but tells cleancache | ||
55 | to treat the pool as shared using a 128-bit UUID as a key. On systems | ||
56 | that may run multiple kernels (such as hard partitioned or virtualized | ||
57 | systems) that may share a clustered filesystem, and where cleancache | ||
58 | may be shared among those kernels, calls to init_shared_fs that specify the | ||
59 | same UUID will receive the same pool id, thus allowing the pages to | ||
60 | be shared. Note that any security requirements must be imposed outside | ||
61 | of the kernel (e.g. by "tools" that control cleancache). Or a | ||
62 | cleancache implementation can simply disable shared_init by always | ||
63 | returning a negative value. | ||
64 | |||
65 | If a get_page is successful on a non-shared pool, the page is flushed (thus | ||
66 | making cleancache an "exclusive" cache). On a shared pool, the page | ||
67 | is NOT flushed on a successful get_page so that it remains accessible to | ||
68 | other sharers. The kernel is responsible for ensuring coherency between | ||
69 | cleancache (shared or not), the page cache, and the filesystem, using | ||
70 | cleancache flush operations as required. | ||
71 | |||
72 | Note that cleancache must enforce put-put-get coherency and get-get | ||
73 | coherency. For the former, if two puts are made to the same handle but | ||
74 | with different data, say AAA by the first put and BBB by the second, a | ||
75 | subsequent get can never return the stale data (AAA). For get-get coherency, | ||
76 | if a get for a given handle fails, subsequent gets for that handle will | ||
77 | never succeed unless preceded by a successful put with that handle. | ||
78 | |||
79 | Last, cleancache provides no SMP serialization guarantees; if two | ||
80 | different Linux threads are simultaneously putting and flushing a page | ||
81 | with the same handle, the results are indeterminate. Callers must | ||
82 | lock the page to ensure serial behavior. | ||
83 | |||
84 | CLEANCACHE PERFORMANCE METRICS | ||
85 | |||
86 | Cleancache monitoring is done by sysfs files in the | ||
87 | /sys/kernel/mm/cleancache directory. The effectiveness of cleancache | ||
88 | can be measured (across all filesystems) with: | ||
89 | |||
90 | succ_gets - number of gets that were successful | ||
91 | failed_gets - number of gets that failed | ||
92 | puts - number of puts attempted (all "succeed") | ||
93 | flushes - number of flushes attempted | ||
94 | |||
95 | A backend implementatation may provide additional metrics. | ||
96 | |||
97 | FAQ | ||
98 | |||
99 | 1) Where's the value? (Andrew Morton) | ||
100 | |||
101 | Cleancache provides a significant performance benefit to many workloads | ||
102 | in many environments with negligible overhead by improving the | ||
103 | effectiveness of the pagecache. Clean pagecache pages are | ||
104 | saved in transcendent memory (RAM that is otherwise not directly | ||
105 | addressable to the kernel); fetching those pages later avoids "refaults" | ||
106 | and thus disk reads. | ||
107 | |||
108 | Cleancache (and its sister code "frontswap") provide interfaces for | ||
109 | this transcendent memory (aka "tmem"), which conceptually lies between | ||
110 | fast kernel-directly-addressable RAM and slower DMA/asynchronous devices. | ||
111 | Disallowing direct kernel or userland reads/writes to tmem | ||
112 | is ideal when data is transformed to a different form and size (such | ||
113 | as with compression) or secretly moved (as might be useful for write- | ||
114 | balancing for some RAM-like devices). Evicted page-cache pages (and | ||
115 | swap pages) are a great use for this kind of slower-than-RAM-but-much- | ||
116 | faster-than-disk transcendent memory, and the cleancache (and frontswap) | ||
117 | "page-object-oriented" specification provides a nice way to read and | ||
118 | write -- and indirectly "name" -- the pages. | ||
119 | |||
120 | In the virtual case, the whole point of virtualization is to statistically | ||
121 | multiplex physical resources across the varying demands of multiple | ||
122 | virtual machines. This is really hard to do with RAM and efforts to | ||
123 | do it well with no kernel change have essentially failed (except in some | ||
124 | well-publicized special-case workloads). Cleancache -- and frontswap -- | ||
125 | with a fairly small impact on the kernel, provide a huge amount | ||
126 | of flexibility for more dynamic, flexible RAM multiplexing. | ||
127 | Specifically, the Xen Transcendent Memory backend allows otherwise | ||
128 | "fallow" hypervisor-owned RAM to not only be "time-shared" between multiple | ||
129 | virtual machines, but the pages can be compressed and deduplicated to | ||
130 | optimize RAM utilization. And when guest OS's are induced to surrender | ||
131 | underutilized RAM (e.g. with "self-ballooning"), page cache pages | ||
132 | are the first to go, and cleancache allows those pages to be | ||
133 | saved and reclaimed if overall host system memory conditions allow. | ||
134 | |||
135 | And the identical interface used for cleancache can be used in | ||
136 | physical systems as well. The zcache driver acts as a memory-hungry | ||
137 | device that stores pages of data in a compressed state. And | ||
138 | the proposed "RAMster" driver shares RAM across multiple physical | ||
139 | systems. | ||
140 | |||
141 | 2) Why does cleancache have its sticky fingers so deep inside the | ||
142 | filesystems and VFS? (Andrew Morton and Christoph Hellwig) | ||
143 | |||
144 | The core hooks for cleancache in VFS are in most cases a single line | ||
145 | and the minimum set are placed precisely where needed to maintain | ||
146 | coherency (via cleancache_flush operations) between cleancache, | ||
147 | the page cache, and disk. All hooks compile into nothingness if | ||
148 | cleancache is config'ed off and turn into a function-pointer- | ||
149 | compare-to-NULL if config'ed on but no backend claims the ops | ||
150 | functions, or to a compare-struct-element-to-negative if a | ||
151 | backend claims the ops functions but a filesystem doesn't enable | ||
152 | cleancache. | ||
153 | |||
154 | Some filesystems are built entirely on top of VFS and the hooks | ||
155 | in VFS are sufficient, so don't require an "init_fs" hook; the | ||
156 | initial implementation of cleancache didn't provide this hook. | ||
157 | But for some filesystems (such as btrfs), the VFS hooks are | ||
158 | incomplete and one or more hooks in fs-specific code are required. | ||
159 | And for some other filesystems, such as tmpfs, cleancache may | ||
160 | be counterproductive. So it seemed prudent to require a filesystem | ||
161 | to "opt in" to use cleancache, which requires adding a hook in | ||
162 | each filesystem. Not all filesystems are supported by cleancache | ||
163 | only because they haven't been tested. The existing set should | ||
164 | be sufficient to validate the concept, the opt-in approach means | ||
165 | that untested filesystems are not affected, and the hooks in the | ||
166 | existing filesystems should make it very easy to add more | ||
167 | filesystems in the future. | ||
168 | |||
169 | The total impact of the hooks to existing fs and mm files is only | ||
170 | about 40 lines added (not counting comments and blank lines). | ||
171 | |||
172 | 3) Why not make cleancache asynchronous and batched so it can | ||
173 | more easily interface with real devices with DMA instead | ||
174 | of copying each individual page? (Minchan Kim) | ||
175 | |||
176 | The one-page-at-a-time copy semantics simplifies the implementation | ||
177 | on both the frontend and backend and also allows the backend to | ||
178 | do fancy things on-the-fly like page compression and | ||
179 | page deduplication. And since the data is "gone" (copied into/out | ||
180 | of the pageframe) before the cleancache get/put call returns, | ||
181 | a great deal of race conditions and potential coherency issues | ||
182 | are avoided. While the interface seems odd for a "real device" | ||
183 | or for real kernel-addressable RAM, it makes perfect sense for | ||
184 | transcendent memory. | ||
185 | |||
186 | 4) Why is non-shared cleancache "exclusive"? And where is the | ||
187 | page "flushed" after a "get"? (Minchan Kim) | ||
188 | |||
189 | The main reason is to free up space in transcendent memory and | ||
190 | to avoid unnecessary cleancache_flush calls. If you want inclusive, | ||
191 | the page can be "put" immediately following the "get". If | ||
192 | put-after-get for inclusive becomes common, the interface could | ||
193 | be easily extended to add a "get_no_flush" call. | ||
194 | |||
195 | The flush is done by the cleancache backend implementation. | ||
196 | |||
197 | 5) What's the performance impact? | ||
198 | |||
199 | Performance analysis has been presented at OLS'09 and LCA'10. | ||
200 | Briefly, performance gains can be significant on most workloads, | ||
201 | especially when memory pressure is high (e.g. when RAM is | ||
202 | overcommitted in a virtual workload); and because the hooks are | ||
203 | invoked primarily in place of or in addition to a disk read/write, | ||
204 | overhead is negligible even in worst case workloads. Basically | ||
205 | cleancache replaces I/O with memory-copy-CPU-overhead; on older | ||
206 | single-core systems with slow memory-copy speeds, cleancache | ||
207 | has little value, but in newer multicore machines, especially | ||
208 | consolidated/virtualized machines, it has great value. | ||
209 | |||
210 | 6) How do I add cleancache support for filesystem X? (Boaz Harrash) | ||
211 | |||
212 | Filesystems that are well-behaved and conform to certain | ||
213 | restrictions can utilize cleancache simply by making a call to | ||
214 | cleancache_init_fs at mount time. Unusual, misbehaving, or | ||
215 | poorly layered filesystems must either add additional hooks | ||
216 | and/or undergo extensive additional testing... or should just | ||
217 | not enable the optional cleancache. | ||
218 | |||
219 | Some points for a filesystem to consider: | ||
220 | |||
221 | - The FS should be block-device-based (e.g. a ram-based FS such | ||
222 | as tmpfs should not enable cleancache) | ||
223 | - To ensure coherency/correctness, the FS must ensure that all | ||
224 | file removal or truncation operations either go through VFS or | ||
225 | add hooks to do the equivalent cleancache "flush" operations | ||
226 | - To ensure coherency/correctness, either inode numbers must | ||
227 | be unique across the lifetime of the on-disk file OR the | ||
228 | FS must provide an "encode_fh" function. | ||
229 | - The FS must call the VFS superblock alloc and deactivate routines | ||
230 | or add hooks to do the equivalent cleancache calls done there. | ||
231 | - To maximize performance, all pages fetched from the FS should | ||
232 | go through the do_mpag_readpage routine or the FS should add | ||
233 | hooks to do the equivalent (cf. btrfs) | ||
234 | - Currently, the FS blocksize must be the same as PAGESIZE. This | ||
235 | is not an architectural restriction, but no backends currently | ||
236 | support anything different. | ||
237 | - A clustered FS should invoke the "shared_init_fs" cleancache | ||
238 | hook to get best performance for some backends. | ||
239 | |||
240 | 7) Why not use the KVA of the inode as the key? (Christoph Hellwig) | ||
241 | |||
242 | If cleancache would use the inode virtual address instead of | ||
243 | inode/filehandle, the pool id could be eliminated. But, this | ||
244 | won't work because cleancache retains pagecache data pages | ||
245 | persistently even when the inode has been pruned from the | ||
246 | inode unused list, and only flushes the data page if the file | ||
247 | gets removed/truncated. So if cleancache used the inode kva, | ||
248 | there would be potential coherency issues if/when the inode | ||
249 | kva is reused for a different file. Alternately, if cleancache | ||
250 | flushed the pages when the inode kva was freed, much of the value | ||
251 | of cleancache would be lost because the cache of pages in cleanache | ||
252 | is potentially much larger than the kernel pagecache and is most | ||
253 | useful if the pages survive inode cache removal. | ||
254 | |||
255 | 8) Why is a global variable required? | ||
256 | |||
257 | The cleancache_enabled flag is checked in all of the frequently-used | ||
258 | cleancache hooks. The alternative is a function call to check a static | ||
259 | variable. Since cleancache is enabled dynamically at runtime, systems | ||
260 | that don't enable cleancache would suffer thousands (possibly | ||
261 | tens-of-thousands) of unnecessary function calls per second. So the | ||
262 | global variable allows cleancache to be enabled by default at compile | ||
263 | time, but have insignificant performance impact when cleancache remains | ||
264 | disabled at runtime. | ||
265 | |||
266 | 9) Does cleanache work with KVM? | ||
267 | |||
268 | The memory model of KVM is sufficiently different that a cleancache | ||
269 | backend may have less value for KVM. This remains to be tested, | ||
270 | especially in an overcommitted system. | ||
271 | |||
272 | 10) Does cleancache work in userspace? It sounds useful for | ||
273 | memory hungry caches like web browsers. (Jamie Lokier) | ||
274 | |||
275 | No plans yet, though we agree it sounds useful, at least for | ||
276 | apps that bypass the page cache (e.g. O_DIRECT). | ||
277 | |||
278 | Last updated: Dan Magenheimer, April 13 2011 | ||