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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/idle_page_tracking.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/vm/idle_page_tracking.txt b/Documentation/vm/idle_page_tracking.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 85dcc3bb85dc..000000000000 --- a/Documentation/vm/idle_page_tracking.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,98 +0,0 @@ -MOTIVATION - -The idle page tracking feature allows to track which memory pages are being -accessed by a workload and which are idle. This information can be useful for -estimating the workload's working set size, which, in turn, can be taken into -account when configuring the workload parameters, setting memory cgroup limits, -or deciding where to place the workload within a compute cluster. - -It is enabled by CONFIG_IDLE_PAGE_TRACKING=y. - -USER API - -The idle page tracking API is located at /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle. Currently, -it consists of the only read-write file, /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap. - -The file implements a bitmap where each bit corresponds to a memory page. The -bitmap is represented by an array of 8-byte integers, and the page at PFN #i is -mapped to bit #i%64 of array element #i/64, byte order is native. When a bit is -set, the corresponding page is idle. - -A page is considered idle if it has not been accessed since it was marked idle -(for more details on what "accessed" actually means see the IMPLEMENTATION -DETAILS section). To mark a page idle one has to set the bit corresponding to -the page by writing to the file. A value written to the file is OR-ed with the -current bitmap value. - -Only accesses to user memory pages are tracked. These are pages mapped to a -process address space, page cache and buffer pages, swap cache pages. For other -page types (e.g. SLAB pages) an attempt to mark a page idle is silently ignored, -and hence such pages are never reported idle. - -For huge pages the idle flag is set only on the head page, so one has to read -/proc/kpageflags in order to correctly count idle huge pages. - -Reading from or writing to /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap will return --EINVAL if you are not starting the read/write on an 8-byte boundary, or -if the size of the read/write is not a multiple of 8 bytes. Writing to -this file beyond max PFN will return -ENXIO. - -That said, in order to estimate the amount of pages that are not used by a -workload one should: - - 1. Mark all the workload's pages as idle by setting corresponding bits in - /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap. The pages can be found by reading - /proc/pid/pagemap if the workload is represented by a process, or by - filtering out alien pages using /proc/kpagecgroup in case the workload is - placed in a memory cgroup. - - 2. Wait until the workload accesses its working set. - - 3. Read /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap and count the number of bits set. If - one wants to ignore certain types of pages, e.g. mlocked pages since they - are not reclaimable, he or she can filter them out using /proc/kpageflags. - -See Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt for more information about /proc/pid/pagemap, -/proc/kpageflags, and /proc/kpagecgroup. - -IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS - -The kernel internally keeps track of accesses to user memory pages in order to -reclaim unreferenced pages first on memory shortage conditions. A page is -considered referenced if it has been recently accessed via a process address -space, in which case one or more PTEs it is mapped to will have the Accessed bit -set, or marked accessed explicitly by the kernel (see mark_page_accessed()). The -latter happens when: - - - a userspace process reads or writes a page using a system call (e.g. read(2) - or write(2)) - - - a page that is used for storing filesystem buffers is read or written, - because a process needs filesystem metadata stored in it (e.g. lists a - directory tree) - - - a page is accessed by a device driver using get_user_pages() - -When a dirty page is written to swap or disk as a result of memory reclaim or -exceeding the dirty memory limit, it is not marked referenced. - -The idle memory tracking feature adds a new page flag, the Idle flag. This flag -is set manually, by writing to /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle/bitmap (see the USER API -section), and cleared automatically whenever a page is referenced as defined -above. - -When a page is marked idle, the Accessed bit must be cleared in all PTEs it is -mapped to, otherwise we will not be able to detect accesses to the page coming -from a process address space. To avoid interference with the reclaimer, which, -as noted above, uses the Accessed bit to promote actively referenced pages, one -more page flag is introduced, the Young flag. When the PTE Accessed bit is -cleared as a result of setting or updating a page's Idle flag, the Young flag -is set on the page. The reclaimer treats the Young flag as an extra PTE -Accessed bit and therefore will consider such a page as referenced. - -Since the idle memory tracking feature is based on the memory reclaimer logic, -it only works with pages that are on an LRU list, other pages are silently -ignored. That means it will ignore a user memory page if it is isolated, but -since there are usually not many of them, it should not affect the overall -result noticeably. In order not to stall scanning of the idle page bitmap, -locked pages may be skipped too. |