mm/page_owner: document page_owner filter

Add documentation for the page_owner_filter userspace tool and
kernel-level filtering features.

[rdunlap@infradead.org: avoid docs build warning]
  Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260708213548.469155-1-rdunlap@infradead.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260707115411.1714314-5-zhen.ni@easystack.cn
Signed-off-by: Zhen Ni <zhen.ni@easystack.cn>
Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) <vbabka@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Cc: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
This commit is contained in:
Zhen Ni
2026-07-28 21:11:54 -07:00
committed by Andrew Morton
parent 1279c14f17
commit e2c75342c2
+76 -2
View File
@@ -65,7 +65,15 @@ un-tracking state.
Usage
=====
1) Build user-space helper::
1) Build user-space helpers:
::
To filter page_owner output:
cd tools/mm
make page_owner_filter
To sort and analyze page_owner output:
cd tools/mm
make page_owner_sort
@@ -74,7 +82,11 @@ Usage
3) Do the job that you want to debug.
4) Analyze information from page owner::
4) (Optional) Filter page_owner output::
./page_owner_filter -m handle -n 0,1,2 > filtered_page_owner.txt
5) Analyze information from page owner::
cat /sys/kernel/debug/page_owner_stacks/show_stacks > stacks.txt
cat stacks.txt
@@ -263,3 +275,65 @@ STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS
f free whether the page has been released or not
st stacktrace stack trace of the page allocation
ator allocator memory allocator for pages
Filtering page_owner output
============================
page_owner supports filtering output at the kernel level before reading,
which reduces the amount of data that needs to be processed in userspace.
The page_owner_filter tool provides a convenient interface for this filtering
capability. It supports two types of filters:
1. **print_mode filter**: Control what information is printed for each page
- ``stack``: Print full stack traces (default, compatible with existing usage)
- ``handle``: Print only stack handle numbers (much faster, smaller output)
- ``stack_handle``: Print both stack traces and handle numbers
The ``handle`` mode uses numeric identifiers instead of full stack traces.
The mapping from handles to actual stack traces can be obtained via the
show_stacks_handles interface.
2. **NUMA node filter**: Filter pages by NUMA node ID
- Supports single node: ``-n 0``
- Multiple nodes: ``-n 0,1,2``
- Ranges: ``-n 0-3``
- Mixed format: ``-n 0,2-3,5``
Usage examples::
# Filter by print mode
./page_owner_filter -m handle
./page_owner_filter -m stack_handle
# Filter by NUMA node
./page_owner_filter -n 0
./page_owner_filter -n 0-3
# Combined filters
./page_owner_filter -m stack -n 0,1,2
./page_owner_filter -m handle -n 0,2-3
# Save to file
./page_owner_filter -m handle -o filtered_output.txt
The handle mode is particularly useful for monitoring and performance-critical
scenarios as it dramatically reduces output size. Testing shows handle mode can
reduce output size by ~66% (84MB vs 244MB) and improve read performance by ~4.4x
compared to full stack output.
The NUMA node filter is useful for NUMA-aware memory allocation analysis and debugging.
Behind the scenes, page_owner_filter opens /sys/kernel/debug/page_owner and
writes filter commands before reading the filtered output. The filtering uses
per-file-descriptor state, allowing each open() to have independent filter settings.
Each file descriptor maintains its own filter state, so you can have multiple
independent filtering operations running concurrently. For example, in different
terminals you can run different filters simultaneously::
# Terminal 1: Filter node 0
./page_owner_filter -n 0 > node0_output.txt
# Terminal 2: Filter node 1 (runs concurrently)
./page_owner_filter -n 1 > node1_output.txt