linux/Documentation/vm
Vladimir Davydov 33c3fc71c8 mm: introduce idle page tracking
Knowing the portion of memory that is not used by a certain application or
memory cgroup (idle memory) can be useful for partitioning the system
efficiently, e.g.  by setting memory cgroup limits appropriately.
Currently, the only means to estimate the amount of idle memory provided
by the kernel is /proc/PID/{clear_refs,smaps}: the user can clear the
access bit for all pages mapped to a particular process by writing 1 to
clear_refs, wait for some time, and then count smaps:Referenced.  However,
this method has two serious shortcomings:

 - it does not count unmapped file pages
 - it affects the reclaimer logic

To overcome these drawbacks, this patch introduces two new page flags,
Idle and Young, and a new sysfs file, /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap.
A page's Idle flag can only be set from userspace by setting bit in
/sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap at the offset corresponding to the page,
and it is cleared whenever the page is accessed either through page tables
(it is cleared in page_referenced() in this case) or using the read(2)
system call (mark_page_accessed()). Thus by setting the Idle flag for
pages of a particular workload, which can be found e.g.  by reading
/proc/PID/pagemap, waiting for some time to let the workload access its
working set, and then reading the bitmap file, one can estimate the amount
of pages that are not used by the workload.

The Young page flag is used to avoid interference with the memory
reclaimer.  A page's Young flag is set whenever the Access bit of a page
table entry pointing to the page is cleared by writing to the bitmap file.
If page_referenced() is called on a Young page, it will add 1 to its
return value, therefore concealing the fact that the Access bit was
cleared.

Note, since there is no room for extra page flags on 32 bit, this feature
uses extended page flags when compiled on 32 bit.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: kpageidle requires an MMU]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: decouple from page-flags rework]
Signed-off-by: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov@parallels.com>
Reviewed-by: Andres Lagar-Cavilla <andreslc@google.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Cc: Greg Thelen <gthelen@google.com>
Cc: Michel Lespinasse <walken@google.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@parallels.com>
Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@openvz.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
..
.gitignore
00-INDEX mm: introduce idle page tracking 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
active_mm.txt Fix common misspellings 2011-03-31 11:26:23 -03:00
balance
cleancache.txt cleancache: forbid overriding cleancache_ops 2015-04-14 16:49:03 -07:00
frontswap.txt doc: fix quite a few typos within Documentation 2012-11-19 14:28:24 +01:00
highmem.txt mm: highmem documentation 2010-10-26 16:52:08 -07:00
hugetlbpage.txt Documentation: update libhugetlbfs location and use for testing 2015-09-08 15:35:28 -07:00
hwpoison.txt mm/memory-failure.c: support use of a dedicated thread to handle SIGBUS(BUS_MCEERR_AO) 2014-06-04 16:54:13 -07:00
idle_page_tracking.txt mm: introduce idle page tracking 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
ksm.txt ksm: add some comments 2013-02-23 17:50:23 -08:00
numa doc: fix broken references 2011-09-27 18:08:04 +02:00
numa_memory_policy.txt Documentation/vm/numa_memory_policy.txt: fix wrong document in numa_memory_policy.txt 2014-04-18 16:40:08 -07:00
overcommit-accounting mm: add overcommit_kbytes sysctl variable 2014-01-21 16:19:44 -08:00
page_migration
page_owner.txt Documentation: add new page_owner document 2014-12-13 12:42:48 -08:00
pagemap.txt proc: add kpagecgroup file 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00
remap_file_pages.txt mm: replace remap_file_pages() syscall with emulation 2015-02-10 14:30:30 -08:00
slub.txt Documentations: Fix slabinfo.c directory in vm/slub.txt 2012-05-10 11:45:23 +03:00
soft-dirty.txt mm: track vma changes with VM_SOFTDIRTY bit 2013-09-11 15:57:56 -07:00
split_page_table_lock x86, mm: do not leak page->ptl for pmd page tables 2013-11-21 16:42:28 -08:00
transhuge.txt doc: add information about max_ptes_none 2015-03-20 07:41:55 -06:00
unevictable-lru.txt Documentation/vm/unevictable-lru.txt: clarify MAP_LOCKED behavior 2015-06-24 17:49:44 -07:00
userfaultfd.txt userfaultfd: change the read API to return a uffd_msg 2015-09-04 16:54:41 -07:00
zsmalloc.txt zsmalloc: zsmalloc documentation 2015-04-15 16:35:21 -07:00
zswap.txt zswap: update docs for runtime-changeable attributes 2015-09-10 13:29:01 -07:00