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>
Pass the node of the current zone being reclaimed to shrink_slab(),
allowing the shrinker control nodemask to be set appropriately for node
aware shrinkers.
Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Glauber Costa <glommer@openvz.org>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@intel.com>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Artem Bityutskiy <artem.bityutskiy@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Arve Hjønnevåg <arve@android.com>
Cc: Carlos Maiolino <cmaiolino@redhat.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>
Cc: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Gleb Natapov <gleb@redhat.com>
Cc: Greg Thelen <gthelen@google.com>
Cc: J. Bruce Fields <bfields@redhat.com>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Jerome Glisse <jglisse@redhat.com>
Cc: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Kent Overstreet <koverstreet@google.com>
Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com>
Cc: Thomas Hellstrom <thellstrom@vmware.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@netapp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Change each shrinker's API by consolidating the existing parameters into
shrink_control struct. This will simplify any further features added w/o
touching each file of shrinker.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix warning]
[kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: fix up new shrinker API]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix xfs warning]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: update gfs2]
Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Consolidate the existing parameters to shrink_slab() into a new
shrink_control struct. This is needed later to pass the same struct to
shrinkers.
Signed-off-by: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Protect the per-sb inode list with a new global lock
inode_sb_list_lock and use it to protect the list manipulations and
traversals. This lock replaces the inode_lock as the inodes on the
list can be validity checked while holding the inode->i_lock and
hence the inode_lock is no longer needed to protect the list.
Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Protect inode state transitions and validity checks with the
inode->i_lock. This enables us to make inode state transitions
independently of the inode_lock and is the first step to peeling
away the inode_lock from the code.
This requires that __iget() is done atomically with i_state checks
during list traversals so that we don't race with another thread
marking the inode I_FREEING between the state check and grabbing the
reference.
Also remove the unlock_new_inode() memory barrier optimisation
required to avoid taking the inode_lock when clearing I_NEW.
Simplify the code by simply taking the inode->i_lock around the
state change and wakeup. Because the wakeup is no longer tricky,
remove the wake_up_inode() function and open code the wakeup where
necessary.
Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <dchinner@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
add I_CLEAR instead of replacing I_FREEING with it. I_CLEAR is
equivalent to I_FREEING for almost all code looking at either;
it's there to keep track of having called clear_inode() exactly
once per inode lifetime, at some point after having set I_FREEING.
I_CLEAR and I_FREEING never get set at the same time with the
current code, so we can switch to setting i_flags to I_FREEING | I_CLEAR
instead of I_CLEAR without loss of information. As the result of
such change, checks become simpler and the amount of code that needs
to know about I_CLEAR shrinks a lot.
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
We used to remove from s_list and s_instances at the same
time. So let's *not* do the former and skip superblocks
that have empty s_instances in the loops over s_list.
The next step, of course, will be to get rid of rescan logics
in those loops.
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
It's unused.
It isn't needed -- read or write flag is already passed and sysctl
shouldn't care about the rest.
It _was_ used in two places at arch/frv for some reason.
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Remove __invalidate_mapping_pages atomic variant now that its sole caller
can sleep (fixed in eccb95cee4 ("vfs: fix
lock inversion in drop_pagecache_sb()")).
This fixes softlockups that can occur while in the drop_caches path.
Signed-off-by: Mike Waychison <mikew@google.com>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
clear_inode() will switch inode state from I_FREEING to I_CLEAR, and do so
_outside_ of inode_lock. So any I_FREEING testing is incomplete without a
coupled testing of I_CLEAR.
So add I_CLEAR tests to drop_pagecache_sb(), generic_sync_sb_inodes() and
add_dquot_ref().
Masayoshi MIZUMA discovered the bug in drop_pagecache_sb() and Jan Kara
reminds fixing the other two cases.
Masayoshi MIZUMA has a nice panic flow:
=====================================================================
[process A] | [process B]
| |
| prune_icache() | drop_pagecache()
| spin_lock(&inode_lock) | drop_pagecache_sb()
| inode->i_state |= I_FREEING; | |
| spin_unlock(&inode_lock) | V
| | | spin_lock(&inode_lock)
| V | |
| dispose_list() | |
| list_del() | |
| clear_inode() | |
| inode->i_state = I_CLEAR | |
| | | V
| | | if (inode->i_state & (I_FREEING|I_WILL_FREE))
| | | continue; <==== NOT MATCH
| | |
| | | (DANGER from here on! Accessing disposing inode!)
| | |
| | | __iget()
| | | list_move() <===== PANIC on poisoned list !!
V V |
(time)
=====================================================================
Reported-by: Masayoshi MIZUMA <m.mizuma@jp.fujitsu.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: 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>
To be on the safe side, it should be less fragile to exclude I_NEW inodes
from inode list scans by default (unless there is an important reason to
have them).
Normally they will get excluded (eg. by zero refcount or writecount etc),
however it is a bit fragile for list walkers to know exactly what parts of
the inode state is set up and valid to test when in I_NEW. So along these
lines, move I_NEW checks upward as well (sometimes taking I_FREEING etc
checks with them too -- this shouldn't be a problem should it?)
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Acked-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Many inodes have no pagecache, so we can avoid lots of lock-takings.
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Fengguang Wu <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Fix longstanding lock inversion in drop_pagecache_sb by dropping inode_lock
before calling __invalidate_mapping_pages(). We just have to make sure inode
won't go away from under us by keeping reference to it and putting the
reference only after we have safely resumed the scan of the inode list. A bit
tricky but not too bad...
Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Fengguang Wu <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn>
Cc: David Chinner <dgc@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Make the following needlessly global functions static:
- drop_pagecache()
- drop_slab()
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
invalidate_mapping_pages() can sometimes take a long time (millions of pages
to free). Long enough for the softlockup detector to trigger.
We used to have a cond_resched() in there but I took it out because the
drop_caches code calls invalidate_mapping_pages() under inode_lock.
The patch adds a nasty flag and puts the cond_resched() back.
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Convert all calls to invalidate_inode_pages() into open-coded calls to
invalidate_mapping_pages().
Leave the invalidate_inode_pages() wrapper in place for now, marked as
deprecated.
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Add /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches. When written to, this will cause the kernel to
discard as much pagecache and/or reclaimable slab objects as it can. THis
operation requires root permissions.
It won't drop dirty data, so the user should run `sync' first.
Caveats:
a) Holds inode_lock for exorbitant amounts of time.
b) Needs to be taught about NUMA nodes: propagate these all the way through
so the discarding can be controlled on a per-node basis.
This is a debugging feature: useful for getting consistent results between
filesystem benchmarks. We could possibly put it under a config option, but
it's less than 300 bytes.
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
