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>
ALLOC_WMARK_MIN, ALLOC_WMARK_LOW and ALLOC_WMARK_HIGH determin whether
pages_min, pages_low or pages_high is used as the zone watermark when
allocating the pages. Two branches in the allocator hotpath determine
which watermark to use.
This patch uses the flags as an array index into a watermark array that is
indexed with WMARK_* defines accessed via helpers. All call sites that
use zone->pages_* are updated to use the helpers for accessing the values
and the array offsets for setting.
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This reverts commit fafd688e4c.
Work is progressing to switch away from pdflush as the process backing
for flushing out dirty data. So it seems pointless to add more knobs
to control pdflush threads. The original author of the patch did not
have any specific use cases for adding the knobs, so we can easily
revert this before 2.6.30 to avoid having to maintain this API
forever.
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Add /proc entries to give the admin the ability to control the minimum and
maximum number of pdflush threads. This allows finer control of pdflush
on both large and small machines.
The rationale is simply one size does not fit all. Admins on large and/or
small systems may want to tune the min/max pdflush thread count to best
suit their needs. Right now the min/max is hardcoded to 2/8. While
probably a fair estimate for smaller machines, large machines with large
numbers of CPUs and large numbers of filesystems/block devices may benefit
from larger numbers of threads working on different block devices.
Even if the background flushing algorithm is radically changed, it is
still likely that multiple threads will be involved and admins would still
desire finer control on the min/max other than to have to recompile the
kernel.
The patch adds '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_min' and
'/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_max' with r/w permissions.
The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_min is 1 and the maximum value is
the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_max. This minimum is required
since additional thread creation is performed in a pdflush thread itself.
The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_max is the current value of
nr_pdflush_threads_min and the maximum value can be 1000.
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt is also updated.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment, fix whitespace, use __read_mostly]
Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com>
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Previous description about system parameter in /proc/sys/net/unix/ is
wrong (or missed). Simply add a new description about unix_dgram_qlen
according to latest kernel.
Signed-off-by: Li Xiaodong <lixd@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Now /proc/sys is described in many places and much information is
redundant. This patch updates the proc.txt and move the /proc/sys
desciption out to the files in Documentation/sysctls.
Details are:
merge
- 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
- 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
- 2.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface
with Documentation/sysctls/fs.txt.
remove
- 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
since it's not better then the Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt.
merge
- 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
with Documentation/sysctls/kernel.txt
remove
- 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
since it's obsolete the sysfs is used now.
remove
- 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
since it's not better then the Documentation/sysctls/sunrpc.txt
move
- 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
- 2.9 Appletalk
- 2.10 IPX
to newly created Documentation/sysctls/net.txt.
remove
- 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
since it's not better then the Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt.
add
- Chapter 3 Per-Process Parameters
to descibe /proc/<pid>/xxx parameters.
Signed-off-by: Shen Feng <shen@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Implement a sysctl file that disables module-loading system-wide since
there is no longer a viable way to remove CAP_SYS_MODULE after the system
bounding capability set was removed in 2.6.25.
Value can only be set to "1", and is tested only if standard capability
checks allow CAP_SYS_MODULE. Given existing /dev/mem protections, this
should allow administrators a one-way method to block module loading
after initial boot-time module loading has finished.
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Update Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt and Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt.
More specifically, the section on /proc/sys/vm in
Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt was removed and a link to
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt added.
Most of the verbiage from proc.txt was simply moved in vm.txt, with new
addtional text for "swappiness" and "stat_interval".
Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com>
Acked-by: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
NOMMU mmap allocates a piece of memory for an mmap that's rounded up in size to
the nearest power-of-2 number of pages. Currently it then discards the excess
pages back to the page allocator, making that memory available for use by other
things. This can, however, cause greater amount of fragmentation.
To counter this, a sysctl is added in order to fine-tune the trimming
behaviour. The default behaviour remains to trim pages aggressively, while
this can either be disabled completely or set to a higher page-granular
watermark in order to have finer-grained control.
vm region vm_top bits taken from an earlier patch by David Howells.
Signed-off-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Tested-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi@gmail.com>
This change introduces two new sysctls to /proc/sys/vm:
dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes.
dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_background_ratio and
dirty_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_ratio.
With growing memory capacities of individual machines, it's no longer
sufficient to specify dirty thresholds as a percentage of the amount of
dirtyable memory over the entire system.
dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes specify quantities of memory, in
bytes, that represent the dirty limits for the entire system. If either
of these values is set, its value represents the amount of dirty memory
that is needed to commence either background or direct writeback.
When a `bytes' or `ratio' file is written, its counterpart becomes a
function of the written value. For example, if dirty_bytes is written to
be 8096, 8K of memory is required to commence direct writeback.
dirty_ratio is then functionally equivalent to 8K / the amount of
dirtyable memory:
dirtyable_memory = free pages + mapped pages + file cache
dirty_background_bytes = dirty_background_ratio * dirtyable_memory
-or-
dirty_background_ratio = dirty_background_bytes / dirtyable_memory
AND
dirty_bytes = dirty_ratio * dirtyable_memory
-or-
dirty_ratio = dirty_bytes / dirtyable_memory
Only one of dirty_background_bytes and dirty_background_ratio may be
specified at a time, and only one of dirty_bytes and dirty_ratio may be
specified. When one sysctl is written, the other appears as 0 when read.
The `bytes' files operate on a page size granularity since dirty limits
are compared with ZVC values, which are in page units.
Prior to this change, the minimum dirty_ratio was 5 as implemented by
get_dirty_limits() although /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio would show any user
written value between 0 and 100. This restriction is maintained, but
dirty_bytes has a lower limit of only one page.
Also prior to this change, the dirty_background_ratio could not equal or
exceed dirty_ratio. This restriction is maintained in addition to
restricting dirty_background_bytes. If either background threshold equals
or exceeds that of the dirty threshold, it is implicitly set to half the
dirty threshold.
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This fills in the documentation for all of the current kernel taint
flags, and fixes the number for TAINT_CRAP, which was incorrectly
described.
Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
We need to add a flag for all code that is in the drivers/staging/
directory to prevent all other kernel developers from worrying about
issues here, and to notify users that the drivers might not be as good
as they are normally used to.
Based on code from Andreas Gruenbacher and Jeff Mahoney to provide a
TAINT flag for the support level of a kernel module in the Novell
enterprise kernel release.
This is the kernel portion of this feature, the ability for the flag to
be set needs to be done in the build process and will happen in a
follow-up patch.
Cc: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de>
Cc: Jeff Mahoney <jeffm@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Adds a new sysctl, 'oom_dump_tasks', that enables the kernel to produce a
dump of all system tasks (excluding kernel threads) when performing an
OOM-killing. Information includes pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, cpu,
oom_adj score, and name.
This is helpful for determining why there was an OOM condition and which
rogue task caused it.
It is configurable so that large systems, such as those with several
thousand tasks, do not incur a performance penalty associated with dumping
data they may not desire.
If an OOM was triggered as a result of a memory controller, the tasklist
shall be filtered to exclude tasks that are not a member of the same
cgroup.
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
NR_OPEN (historically set to 1024*1024) actually forbids processes to open
more than 1024*1024 handles.
Unfortunatly some production servers hit the not so 'ridiculously high
value' of 1024*1024 file descriptors per process.
Changing NR_OPEN is not considered safe because of vmalloc space potential
exhaust.
This patch introduces a new sysctl (/proc/sys/fs/nr_open) wich defaults to
1024*1024, so that admins can decide to change this limit if their workload
needs it.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: export it for sparc64]
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <dada1@cosmosbay.com>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net>
Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Add vm.highmem_is_dirtyable toggle
A 32 bit machine with HIGHMEM64 enabled running DCC has an MMAPed file of
approximately 2Gb size which contains a hash format that is written
randomly by the dbclean process. On 2.6.16 this process took a few
minutes. With lowmem only accounting of dirty ratios, this takes about 12
hours of 100% disk IO, all random writes.
Include a toggle in /proc/sys/vm/highmem_is_dirtyable which can be set to 1 to
add the highmem back to the total available memory count.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: Fix the CONFIG_DETECT_SOFTLOCKUP=y build]
Signed-off-by: Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm>
Cc: Ethan Solomita <solo@google.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: WU Fengguang <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
