Commit Graph

210 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Hugh Dickins
81464e3060 ksm: five little cleanups
1. We don't use __break_cow entry point now: merge it into break_cow.
2. remove_all_slot_rmap_items is just a special case of
   remove_trailing_rmap_items: use the latter instead.
3. Extend comment on unmerge_ksm_pages and rmap_items.
4. try_to_merge_two_pages should use try_to_merge_with_ksm_page
   instead of duplicating its code; and so swap them around.
5. Comment on cmp_and_merge_page described last year's: update it.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:32 -07:00
Hugh Dickins
6e15838425 ksm: keep quiet while list empty
ksm_scan_thread already sleeps in wait_event_interruptible until setting
ksm_run activates it; but if there's nothing on its list to look at, i.e.
nobody has yet said madvise MADV_MERGEABLE, it's a shame to be clocking
up system time and full_scans: ksmd_should_run added to check that too.

And move the mutex_lock out around it: the new counts showed that when
ksm_run is stopped, a little work often got done afterwards, because it
had been read before taking the mutex.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:32 -07:00
Hugh Dickins
26465d3ea5 ksm: break cow once unshared
We kept agreeing not to bother about the unswappable shared KSM pages
which later become unshared by others: observation suggests they're not
a significant proportion.  But they are disadvantageous, and it is easier
to break COW to replace them by swappable pages, than offer statistics
to show that they don't matter; then we can stop worrying about them.

Doing this in ksm_do_scan, they don't go through cmp_and_merge_page on
this pass: give them a good chance of getting into the unstable tree
on the next pass, or back into the stable, by computing checksum now.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:32 -07:00
Hugh Dickins
473b0ce4d1 ksm: pages_unshared and pages_volatile
The pages_shared and pages_sharing counts give a good picture of how
successful KSM is at sharing; but no clue to how much wasted work it's
doing to get there.  Add pages_unshared (count of unique pages waiting
in the unstable tree, hoping to find a mate) and pages_volatile.

pages_volatile is harder to define.  It includes those pages changing
too fast to get into the unstable tree, but also whatever other edge
conditions prevent a page getting into the trees: a high value may
deserve investigation.  Don't try to calculate it from the various
conditions: it's the total of rmap_items less those accounted for.

Also show full_scans: the number of completed scans of everything
registered in the mm list.

The locking for all these counts is simply ksm_thread_mutex.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:32 -07:00
Hugh Dickins
e178dfde39 ksm: move pages_sharing updates
The pages_shared count is incremented and decremented when adding a node
to and removing a node from the stable tree: easy to understand.  But the
pages_sharing count was hard to follow, being adjusted in various places:
increment and decrement it when adding to and removing from the stable tree.

And the pages_sharing variable used to include the pages_shared, then those
were subtracted when shown in the pages_sharing sysfs file: now keep it as
an exclusive count of leaves hanging off the stable tree nodes, throughout.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:32 -07:00
Hugh Dickins
b402826033 ksm: rename kernel_pages_allocated
We're not implementing swapping of KSM pages in its first release;
but when that follows, "kernel_pages_allocated" will be a very poor
name for the sysfs file showing number of nodes in the stable tree:
rename that to "pages_shared" throughout.

But we already have a "pages_shared", counting those page slots
sharing the shared pages: first rename that to... "pages_sharing".

What will become of "max_kernel_pages" when the pages shared can
be swapped?  I guess it will just be removed, so keep that name.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Acked-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:32 -07:00
Izik Eidus
339aa62469 ksm: change ksm nice level to be 5
ksm should try not to disturb other tasks as much as possible.

Signed-off-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
Izik Eidus
36b2528dc1 ksm: change copyright message
Adding Hugh Dickins into the authors list.

Signed-off-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
Izik Eidus
31dbd01f31 ksm: Kernel SamePage Merging
Ksm is code that allows merging of identical pages between one or more
applications, in a way invisible to the applications that use it.  Pages
that are merged are marked as read-only, then COWed when any application
tries to change them.

Whereas fork() allows sharing anonymous pages between parent and child,
ksm can share anonymous pages between unrelated processes.

Ksm works by walking over the memory pages of the applications it scans,
in order to find identical pages.  It uses two sorted data structures,
called the stable and unstable trees, to locate identical pages in an
effective way.

When ksm finds two identical pages, it marks them as readonly and merges
them into a single page.  After the pages have been marked as readonly and
merged into one, Linux treats them as normal copy-on-write pages, copying
to a fresh anonymous page if write access is required later.

Ksm scans and merges anonymous pages only in those memory areas that have
been registered with it by madvise(addr, length, MADV_MERGEABLE).

The ksm scanner is controlled by sysfs files in /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/:

max_kernel_pages - the maximum number of unswappable kernel pages
                   which may be allocated by ksm (0 for unlimited).

kernel_pages_allocated - how many ksm pages are currently allocated,
                         sharing identical content between different
                         processes (pages unswappable in this release).

pages_shared - how many pages have been saved by sharing with ksm pages
               (kernel_pages_allocated being excluded from this count).

pages_to_scan - how many pages ksm should scan before sleeping.

sleep_millisecs - how many milliseconds ksm should sleep between scans.

run - write 0 to disable ksm, read 0 while ksm is disabled (default),
      write 1 to run ksm, read 1 while ksm is running,
      write 2 to disable ksm and unmerge all its pages.

Includes contributions by Andrea Arcangeli Chris Wright and Hugh Dickins.

[hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk: fix rare page leak]
Signed-off-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Signed-off-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
Hugh Dickins
f8af4da3b4 ksm: the mm interface to ksm
This patch presents the mm interface to a dummy version of ksm.c, for
better scrutiny of that interface: the real ksm.c follows later.

When CONFIG_KSM is not set, madvise(2) reject MADV_MERGEABLE and
MADV_UNMERGEABLE with EINVAL, since that seems more helpful than
pretending that they can be serviced.  But when CONFIG_KSM=y, accept them
even if KSM is not currently running, and even on areas which KSM will not
touch (e.g.  hugetlb or shared file or special driver mappings).

Like other madvices, report ENOMEM despite success if any area in the
range is unmapped, and use EAGAIN to report out of memory.

Define vma flag VM_MERGEABLE to identify an area on which KSM may try
merging pages: leave it to ksm_madvise() to decide whether to set it.
Define mm flag MMF_VM_MERGEABLE to identify an mm which might contain
VM_MERGEABLE areas, to minimize callouts when forking or exiting.

Based upon earlier patches by Chris Wright and Izik Eidus.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Signed-off-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00