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123 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Andy Whitcroft
c661b078fd synchronous lumpy reclaim: wait for page writeback when directly reclaiming contiguous areas
Lumpy reclaim works by selecting a lead page from the LRU list and then
selecting pages for reclaim from the order-aligned area of pages.  In the
situation were all pages in that region are inactive and not referenced by any
process over time, it works well.

In the situation where there is even light load on the system, the pages may
not free quickly.  Out of a area of 1024 pages, maybe only 950 of them are
freed when the allocation attempt occurs because lumpy reclaim returned early.
 This patch alters the behaviour of direct reclaim for large contiguous
blocks.

The first attempt to call shrink_page_list() is asynchronous but if it fails,
the pages are submitted a second time and the calling process waits for the IO
to complete.  This may stall allocators waiting for contiguous memory but that
should be expected behaviour for high-order users.  It is preferable behaviour
to potentially queueing unnecessary areas for IO.  Note that kswapd will not
stall in this fashion.

[apw@shadowen.org: update to version 2]
[apw@shadowen.org: update to version 3]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-08-22 19:52:45 -07:00
Andy Whitcroft
e9187bdcbb synchronous lumpy reclaim: ensure we count pages transitioning inactive via clear_active_flags
As pointed out by Mel when reclaim is applied at higher orders a significant
amount of IO may be started.  As this takes finite time to drain reclaim will
consider more areas than ultimatly needed to satisfy the request.  This leads
to more reclaim than strictly required and reduced success rates.

I was able to confirm Mel's test results on systems locally.  These show that
even under light load the success rates drop off far more than expected.
Testing with a modified version of his patch (which follows) I was able to
allocate almost all of ZONE_MOVABLE with a near idle system.  I ran 5 test
passes sequentially following system boot (the system has 29 hugepages in
ZONE_MOVABLE):

  2.6.23-rc1              11  8  6  7  7
  sync_lumpy              28 28 29 29 26

These show that although hugely better than the near 0% success normally
expected we can only allocate about a 1/4 of the zone.  Using synchronous
reclaim for these allocations we get close to 100% as expected.

I have also run our standard high order tests and these show no regressions in
allocation success rates at rest, and some significant improvements under
load.

This patch:

We are transitioning pages from active to inactive in clear_active_flags,
those need counting as PGDEACTIVATE vm events.

Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-08-22 19:52:45 -07:00
Rafael J. Wysocki
8314418629 Freezer: make kernel threads nonfreezable by default
Currently, the freezer treats all tasks as freezable, except for the kernel
threads that explicitly set the PF_NOFREEZE flag for themselves.  This
approach is problematic, since it requires every kernel thread to either
set PF_NOFREEZE explicitly, or call try_to_freeze(), even if it doesn't
care for the freezing of tasks at all.

It seems better to only require the kernel threads that want to or need to
be frozen to use some freezer-related code and to remove any
freezer-related code from the other (nonfreezable) kernel threads, which is
done in this patch.

The patch causes all kernel threads to be nonfreezable by default (ie.  to
have PF_NOFREEZE set by default) and introduces the set_freezable()
function that should be called by the freezable kernel threads in order to
unset PF_NOFREEZE.  It also makes all of the currently freezable kernel
threads call set_freezable(), so it shouldn't cause any (intentional)
change of behaviour to appear.  Additionally, it updates documentation to
describe the freezing of tasks more accurately.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fixes]
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Acked-by: Nigel Cunningham <nigel@nigel.suspend2.net>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Cc: Gautham R Shenoy <ego@in.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-17 10:23:02 -07:00
Rusty Russell
8e1f936b73 mm: clean up and kernelify shrinker registration
I can never remember what the function to register to receive VM pressure
is called.  I have to trace down from __alloc_pages() to find it.

It's called "set_shrinker()", and it needs Your Help.

1) Don't hide struct shrinker.  It contains no magic.
2) Don't allocate "struct shrinker".  It's not helpful.
3) Call them "register_shrinker" and "unregister_shrinker".
4) Call the function "shrink" not "shrinker".
5) Reduce the 17 lines of waffly comments to 13, but document it properly.

Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: David Chinner <dgc@sgi.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-17 10:23:00 -07:00
Andy Whitcroft
5ad333eb66 Lumpy Reclaim V4
When we are out of memory of a suitable size we enter reclaim.  The current
reclaim algorithm targets pages in LRU order, which is great for fairness at
order-0 but highly unsuitable if you desire pages at higher orders.  To get
pages of higher order we must shoot down a very high proportion of memory;
>95% in a lot of cases.

This patch set adds a lumpy reclaim algorithm to the allocator.  It targets
groups of pages at the specified order anchored at the end of the active and
inactive lists.  This encourages groups of pages at the requested orders to
move from active to inactive, and active to free lists.  This behaviour is
only triggered out of direct reclaim when higher order pages have been
requested.

This patch set is particularly effective when utilised with an
anti-fragmentation scheme which groups pages of similar reclaimability
together.

This patch set is based on Peter Zijlstra's lumpy reclaim V2 patch which forms
the foundation.  Credit to Mel Gorman for sanitity checking.

Mel said:

  The patches have an application with hugepage pool resizing.

  When lumpy-reclaim is used used with ZONE_MOVABLE, the hugepages pool can
  be resized with greater reliability.  Testing on a desktop machine with 2GB
  of RAM showed that growing the hugepage pool with ZONE_MOVABLE on it's own
  was very slow as the success rate was quite low.  Without lumpy-reclaim,
  each attempt to grow the pool by 100 pages would yield 1 or 2 hugepages.
  With lumpy-reclaim, getting 40 to 70 hugepages on each attempt was typical.

[akpm@osdl.org: ia64 pfn_to_nid fixes and loop cleanup]
[bunk@stusta.de: static declarations for internal functions]
[a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl: initial lumpy V2 implementation]
Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-17 10:22:59 -07:00
Rafael J. Wysocki
8bb7844286 Add suspend-related notifications for CPU hotplug
Since nonboot CPUs are now disabled after tasks and devices have been
frozen and the CPU hotplug infrastructure is used for this purpose, we need
special CPU hotplug notifications that will help the CPU-hotplug-aware
subsystems distinguish normal CPU hotplug events from CPU hotplug events
related to a system-wide suspend or resume operation in progress.  This
patch introduces such notifications and causes them to be used during
suspend and resume transitions.  It also changes all of the
CPU-hotplug-aware subsystems to take these notifications into consideration
(for now they are handled in the same way as the corresponding "normal"
ones).

[oleg@tv-sign.ru: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Gautham R Shenoy <ego@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-09 12:30:56 -07:00
Guillaume Chazarain
3e9f45bd18 Factor outstanding I/O error handling
Cleanup: setting an outstanding error on a mapping was open coded too many
times.  Factor it out in mapping_set_error().

Signed-off-by: Guillaume Chazarain <guichaz@yahoo.fr>
Cc: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-08 11:14:57 -07:00
Rafael J. Wysocki
b1296cc48b freezer: fix racy usage of try_to_freeze in kswapd
Currently we can miss freeze_process()->signal_wake_up() in kswapd() if it
happens between try_to_freeze() and prepare_to_wait().  To prevent this
from happening we should check freezing(current) before calling schedule().

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-07 12:12:59 -07:00
Andrew Morton
232ea4d69d [PATCH] throttle_vm_writeout(): don't loop on GFP_NOFS and GFP_NOIO allocations
throttle_vm_writeout() is designed to wait for the dirty levels to subside.
But if the caller holds IO or FS locks, we might be holding up that writeout.

So change it to take a single nap to give other devices a chance to clean some
memory, then return.

Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@mail.parknet.co.jp>
Cc: Kumar Gala <galak@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Pete Zaitcev <zaitcev@redhat.com>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-03-01 14:53:38 -08:00
Christoph Lameter
c878538598 [PATCH] Use ZVC for inactive and active counts
The determination of the dirty ratio to determine writeback behavior is
currently based on the number of total pages on the system.

However, not all pages in the system may be dirtied.  Thus the ratio is always
too low and can never reach 100%.  The ratio may be particularly skewed if
large hugepage allocations, slab allocations or device driver buffers make
large sections of memory not available anymore.  In that case we may get into
a situation in which f.e.  the background writeback ratio of 40% cannot be
reached anymore which leads to undesired writeback behavior.

This patchset fixes that issue by determining the ratio based on the actual
pages that may potentially be dirty.  These are the pages on the active and
the inactive list plus free pages.

The problem with those counts has so far been that it is expensive to
calculate these because counts from multiple nodes and multiple zones will
have to be summed up.  This patchset makes these counters ZVC counters.  This
means that a current sum per zone, per node and for the whole system is always
available via global variables and not expensive anymore to calculate.

The patchset results in some other good side effects:

- Removal of the various functions that sum up free, active and inactive
  page counts

- Cleanup of the functions that display information via the proc filesystem.

This patch:

The use of a ZVC for nr_inactive and nr_active allows a simplification of some
counter operations.  More ZVC functionality is used for sums etc in the
following patches.

[akpm@osdl.org: UP build fix]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-02-11 10:51:17 -08:00
Andrew Morton
76395d3761 [PATCH] shrink_all_memory(): fix lru_pages handling
At the end of shrink_all_memory() we forget to recalculate lru_pages: it can
be zero.

Fix that up, and add a helper function for this operation too.

Also, recalculate lru_pages each time around the inner loop to get the
balancing correct.

Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2007-01-05 23:55:29 -08:00
Shantanu Goel
918d3f90e8 [PATCH] Buglet in vmscan.c
Fix a rather obvious buglet.  Noticed while instrumenting the VM using
/proc/vmstat.

Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-30 10:56:43 -08:00
Nigel Cunningham
e07aa05b60 [PATCH] Fix swapped parameters in mm/vmscan.c
The version of mm/vmscan.c in Linus' current tree has swapped parameters in
the shrink_all_zones declaration and call, used by the various
suspend-to-disk implementations.  This doesn't seem to have any great
adverse effect, but it's clearly wrong.

Signed-off-by: Nigel Cunningham <nigel@suspend2.net>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-22 08:55:47 -08:00
Paul Jackson
02a0e53d82 [PATCH] cpuset: rework cpuset_zone_allowed api
Elaborate the API for calling cpuset_zone_allowed(), so that users have to
explicitly choose between the two variants:

  cpuset_zone_allowed_hardwall()
  cpuset_zone_allowed_softwall()

Until now, whether or not you got the hardwall flavor depended solely on
whether or not you or'd in the __GFP_HARDWALL gfp flag to the gfp_mask
argument.

If you didn't specify __GFP_HARDWALL, you implicitly got the softwall
version.

Unfortunately, this meant that users would end up with the softwall version
without thinking about it.  Since only the softwall version might sleep,
this led to bugs with possible sleeping in interrupt context on more than
one occassion.

The hardwall version requires that the current tasks mems_allowed allows
the node of the specified zone (or that you're in interrupt or that
__GFP_THISNODE is set or that you're on a one cpuset system.)

The softwall version, depending on the gfp_mask, might allow a node if it
was allowed in the nearest enclusing cpuset marked mem_exclusive (which
requires taking the cpuset lock 'callback_mutex' to evaluate.)

This patch removes the cpuset_zone_allowed() call, and forces the caller to
explicitly choose between the hardwall and the softwall case.

If the caller wants the gfp_mask to determine this choice, they should (1)
be sure they can sleep or that __GFP_HARDWALL is set, and (2) invoke the
cpuset_zone_allowed_softwall() routine.

This adds another 100 or 200 bytes to the kernel text space, due to the few
lines of nearly duplicate code at the top of both cpuset_zone_allowed_*
routines.  It should save a few instructions executed for the calls that
turned into calls of cpuset_zone_allowed_hardwall, thanks to not having to
set (before the call) then check (within the call) the __GFP_HARDWALL flag.

For the most critical call, from get_page_from_freelist(), the same
instructions are executed as before -- the old cpuset_zone_allowed()
routine it used to call is the same code as the
cpuset_zone_allowed_softwall() routine that it calls now.

Not a perfect win, but seems worth it, to reduce this chance of hitting a
sleeping with irq off complaint again.

Signed-off-by: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-13 09:05:49 -08:00
Ingo Molnar
0231606785 [PATCH] hotplug CPU: clean up hotcpu_notifier() use
There was lots of #ifdef noise in the kernel due to hotcpu_notifier(fn,
prio) not correctly marking 'fn' as used in the !HOTPLUG_CPU case, and thus
generating compiler warnings of unused symbols, hence forcing people to add
#ifdefs.

the compiler can skip truly unused functions just fine:

    text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
 1624412  728710 3674856 6027978  5bfaca vmlinux.before
 1624412  728710 3674856 6027978  5bfaca vmlinux.after

[akpm@osdl.org: topology.c fix]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-07 08:39:39 -08:00
Nigel Cunningham
7dfb71030f [PATCH] Add include/linux/freezer.h and move definitions from sched.h
Move process freezing functions from include/linux/sched.h to freezer.h, so
that modifications to the freezer or the kernel configuration don't require
recompiling just about everything.

[akpm@osdl.org: fix ueagle driver]
Signed-off-by: Nigel Cunningham <nigel@suspend2.net>
Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-07 08:39:27 -08:00
Rafael J. Wysocki
8357376d3d [PATCH] swsusp: Improve handling of highmem
Currently swsusp saves the contents of highmem pages by copying them to the
normal zone which is quite inefficient (eg.  it requires two normal pages
to be used for saving one highmem page).  This may be improved by using
highmem for saving the contents of saveable highmem pages.

Namely, during the suspend phase of the suspend-resume cycle we try to
allocate as many free highmem pages as there are saveable highmem pages.
If there are not enough highmem image pages to store the contents of all of
the saveable highmem pages, some of them will be stored in the "normal"
memory.  Next, we allocate as many free "normal" pages as needed to store
the (remaining) image data.  We use a memory bitmap to mark the allocated
free pages (ie.  highmem as well as "normal" image pages).

Now, we use another memory bitmap to mark all of the saveable pages
(highmem as well as "normal") and the contents of the saveable pages are
copied into the image pages.  Then, the second bitmap is used to save the
pfns corresponding to the saveable pages and the first one is used to save
their data.

During the resume phase the pfns of the pages that were saveable during the
suspend are loaded from the image and used to mark the "unsafe" page
frames.  Next, we try to allocate as many free highmem page frames as to
load all of the image data that had been in the highmem before the suspend
and we allocate so many free "normal" page frames that the total number of
allocated free pages (highmem and "normal") is equal to the size of the
image.  While doing this we have to make sure that there will be some extra
free "normal" and "safe" page frames for two lists of PBEs constructed
later.

Now, the image data are loaded, if possible, into their "original" page
frames.  The image data that cannot be written into their "original" page
frames are loaded into "safe" page frames and their "original" kernel
virtual addresses, as well as the addresses of the "safe" pages containing
their copies, are stored in one of two lists of PBEs.

One list of PBEs is for the copies of "normal" suspend pages (ie.  "normal"
pages that were saveable during the suspend) and it is used in the same way
as previously (ie.  by the architecture-dependent parts of swsusp).  The
other list of PBEs is for the copies of highmem suspend pages.  The pages
in this list are restored (in a reversible way) right before the
arch-dependent code is called.

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-07 08:39:27 -08:00
Andrew Morton
e1dbeda60a [PATCH] balance_pdgat() cleanup
Despaghettify balance_pdgat() a bit.

Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-12-07 08:39:21 -08:00
Martin Bligh
bbdb396a60 [PATCH] Use min of two prio settings in calculating distress for reclaim
If try_to_free_pages / balance_pgdat are called with a gfp_mask specifying
GFP_IO and/or GFP_FS, they will reclaim the requisite number of pages, and the
reset prev_priority to DEF_PRIORITY (or to some other high (ie: unurgent)
value).

However, another reclaimer without those gfp_mask flags set (say, GFP_NOIO)
may still be struggling to reclaim pages.  The concurrent overwrite of
zone->prev_priority will cause this GFP_NOIO thread to unexpectedly cease
deactivating mapped pages, thus causing reclaim difficulties.

Fix this is to key the distress calculation not off zone->prev_priority, but
also take into account the local caller's priority by using
min(zone->prev_priority, sc->priority)

Signed-off-by: Martin J. Bligh <mbligh@google.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-10-28 11:30:51 -07:00
Martin Bligh
3bb1a852ab [PATCH] vmscan: Fix temp_priority race
The temp_priority field in zone is racy, as we can walk through a reclaim
path, and just before we copy it into prev_priority, it can be overwritten
(say with DEF_PRIORITY) by another reclaimer.

The same bug is contained in both try_to_free_pages and balance_pgdat, but
it is fixed slightly differently.  In balance_pgdat, we keep a separate
priority record per zone in a local array.  In try_to_free_pages there is
no need to do this, as the priority level is the same for all zones that we
reclaim from.

Impact of this bug is that temp_priority is copied into prev_priority, and
setting this artificially high causes reclaimers to set distress
artificially low.  They then fail to reclaim mapped pages, when they are,
in fact, under severe memory pressure (their priority may be as low as 0).
This causes the OOM killer to fire incorrectly.

From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>

__zone_reclaim() isn't modifying zone->prev_priority.  But zone->prev_priority
is used in the decision whether or not to bring mapped pages onto the inactive
list.  Hence there's a risk here that __zone_reclaim() will fail because
zone->prev_priority ir large (ie: low urgency) and lots of mapped pages end up
stuck on the active list.

Fix that up by decreasing (ie making more urgent) zone->prev_priority as
__zone_reclaim() scans the zone's pages.

This bug perhaps explains why ZONE_RECLAIM_PRIORITY was created.  It should be
possible to remove that now, and to just start out at DEF_PRIORITY?

Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-10-28 11:30:50 -07:00
Andrew Morton
3fcfab16c5 [PATCH] separate bdi congestion functions from queue congestion functions
Separate out the concept of "queue congestion" from "backing-dev congestion".
Congestion is a backing-dev concept, not a queue concept.

The blk_* congestion functions are retained, as wrappers around the core
backing-dev congestion functions.

This proper layering is needed so that NFS can cleanly use the congestion
functions, and so that CONFIG_BLOCK=n actually links.

Cc: "Thomas Maier" <balagi@justmail.de>
Cc: "Jens Axboe" <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Peter Osterlund <petero2@telia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-10-20 10:26:35 -07:00
Andrew Morton
a649fd9271 [PATCH] invalidate: remove_mapping() fix
If remove_mapping() failed to remove the page from its mapping, don't go and
mark it not uptodate!  Makes kernel go dead.

(Actually, I don't think the ClearPageUptodate is needed there at all).

Says Nick Piggin:

   "Right, it isn't needed because at this point the page is guaranteed
    by remove_mapping to have no references (except us) and cannot pick
    up any new ones because it is removed from pagecache.

    We can delete it."

Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-10-17 08:18:43 -07:00
Nick Piggin
0fd0e6b05a [PATCH] page invalidation cleanup
Clean up the invalidate code, and use a common function to safely remove
the page from pagecache.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-27 08:26:12 -07:00
Andrew Morton
e129b5c23c [PATCH] vm: add per-zone writeout counter
The VM is supposed to minimise the number of pages which get written off the
LRU (for IO scheduling efficiency, and for high reclaim-success rates).  But
we don't actually have a clear way of showing how true this is.

So add `nr_vmscan_write' to /proc/vmstat and /proc/zoneinfo - the number of
pages which have been written by the vm scanner in this zone and globally.

Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-27 08:26:12 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
89fa30242f [PATCH] NUMA: Add zone_to_nid function
There are many places where we need to determine the node of a zone.
Currently we use a difficult to read sequence of pointer dereferencing.
Put that into an inline function and use throughout VM.  Maybe we can find
a way to optimize the lookup in the future.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:52 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
83e33a4711 [PATCH] zone reclaim with slab: avoid unecessary off node allocations
Minor performance fix.

If we reclaimed enough slab pages from a zone then we can avoid going off
node with the current allocation.  Take care of updating nr_reclaimed when
reclaiming from the slab.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:52 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
0ff38490c8 [PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim
Currently one can enable slab reclaim by setting an explicit option in
/proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode.  Slab reclaim is then used as a final
option if the freeing of unmapped file backed pages is not enough to free
enough pages to allow a local allocation.

However, that means that the slab can grow excessively and that most memory
of a node may be used by slabs.  We have had a case where a machine with
46GB of memory was using 40-42GB for slab.  Zone reclaim was effective in
dealing with pagecache pages.  However, slab reclaim was only done during
global reclaim (which is a bit rare on NUMA systems).

This patch implements slab reclaim during zone reclaim.  Zone reclaim
occurs if there is a danger of an off node allocation.  At that point we

1. Shrink the per node page cache if the number of pagecache
   pages is more than min_unmapped_ratio percent of pages in a zone.

2. Shrink the slab cache if the number of the nodes reclaimable slab pages
   (patch depends on earlier one that implements that counter)
   are more than min_slab_ratio (a new /proc/sys/vm tunable).

The shrinking of the slab cache is a bit problematic since it is not node
specific.  So we simply calculate what point in the slab we want to reach
(current per node slab use minus the number of pages that neeed to be
allocated) and then repeately run the global reclaim until that is
unsuccessful or we have reached the limit.  I hope we will have zone based
slab reclaim at some point which will make that easier.

The default for the min_slab_ratio is 5%

Also remove the slab option from /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode.

[akpm@osdl.org: cleanups]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:51 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
972d1a7b14 [PATCH] ZVC: Support NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE / NR_SLAB_UNRECLAIMABLE
Remove the atomic counter for slab_reclaim_pages and replace the counter
and NR_SLAB with two ZVC counter that account for unreclaimable and
reclaimable slab pages: NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE and NR_SLAB_UNRECLAIMABLE.

Change the check in vmscan.c to refer to to NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE.  The
intend seems to be to check for slab pages that could be freed.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:51 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
8417bba4b1 [PATCH] Replace min_unmapped_ratio by min_unmapped_pages in struct zone
*_pages is a better description of the role of the variable.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:51 -07:00
Nick Piggin
4ff1ffb487 [PATCH] oom: reclaim_mapped on oom
Potentially it takes several scans of the lru lists before we can even start
reclaiming pages.

mapped pages, with young ptes can take 2 passes on the active list + one on
the inactive list.  But reclaim_mapped may not always kick in instantly, so it
could take even more than that.

Raise the threshold for marking a zone as all_unreclaimable from a factor of 4
time the pages in the zone to 6.  Introduce a mechanism to force
reclaim_mapped if we've reached a factor 3 and still haven't made progress.

Previously, a customer doing stress testing was able to easily OOM the box
after using only a small fraction of its swap (~100MB).  After the patches, it
would only OOM after having used up all swap (~800MB).

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:48 -07:00
Nick Piggin
408d85441c [PATCH] oom: use unreclaimable info
__alloc_pages currently starts shooting if page reclaim has failed to free up
swap_cluster_max pages in one run through the priorities.  This is not always
a good indicator on its own, so make use of the all_unreclaimable logic as
well: don't consider going OOM until all zones we're interested in are
unreclaimable.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:48 -07:00
Nick Piggin
28e4d965e6 [PATCH] mm: remove_mapping() safeness
Some users of remove_mapping had been unsafe.

Modify the remove_mapping precondition to ensure the caller has locked the
page and obtained the correct mapping.  Modify callers to ensure the
mapping is the correct one.

[hugh@veritas.com: swapper_space fix]
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:48 -07:00
Nick Piggin
725d704eca [PATCH] mm: VM_BUG_ON
Introduce a VM_BUG_ON, which is turned on with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.  Use this
in the lightweight, inline refcounting functions; PageLRU and PageActive
checks in vmscan, because they're pretty well confined to vmscan.  And in
page allocate/free fastpaths which can be the hottest parts of the kernel
for kbuilds.

Unlike BUG_ON, VM_BUG_ON must not be used to execute statements with
side-effects, and should not be used outside core mm code.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 08:48:44 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
9614634fe6 [PATCH] ZVC/zone_reclaim: Leave 1% of unmapped pagecache pages for file I/O
It turns out that it is advantageous to leave a small portion of unmapped file
backed pages if all of a zone's pages (or almost all pages) are allocated and
so the page allocator has to go off-node.

This allows recently used file I/O buffers to stay on the node and
reduces the times that zone reclaim is invoked if file I/O occurs
when we run out of memory in a zone.

The problem is that zone reclaim runs too frequently when the page cache is
used for file I/O (read write and therefore unmapped pages!) alone and we have
almost all pages of the zone allocated.  Zone reclaim may remove 32 unmapped
pages.  File I/O will use these pages for the next read/write requests and the
unmapped pages increase.  After the zone has filled up again zone reclaim will
remove it again after only 32 pages.  This cycle is too inefficient and there
are potentially too many zone reclaim cycles.

With the 1% boundary we may still remove all unmapped pages for file I/O in
zone reclaim pass.  However.  it will take a large number of read and writes
to get back to 1% again where we trigger zone reclaim again.

The zone reclaim 2.6.16/17 does not show this behavior because we have a 30
second timeout.

[akpm@osdl.org: rename the /proc file and the variable]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-07-03 15:26:59 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
f8891e5e1f [PATCH] Light weight event counters
The remaining counters in page_state after the zoned VM counter patches
have been applied are all just for show in /proc/vmstat.  They have no
essential function for the VM.

We use a simple increment of per cpu variables.  In order to avoid the most
severe races we disable preempt.  Preempt does not prevent the race between
an increment and an interrupt handler incrementing the same statistics
counter.  However, that race is exceedingly rare, we may only loose one
increment or so and there is no requirement (at least not in kernel) that
the vm event counters have to be accurate.

In the non preempt case this results in a simple increment for each
counter.  For many architectures this will be reduced by the compiler to a
single instruction.  This single instruction is atomic for i386 and x86_64.
 And therefore even the rare race condition in an interrupt is avoided for
both architectures in most cases.

The patchset also adds an off switch for embedded systems that allows a
building of linux kernels without these counters.

The implementation of these counters is through inline code that hopefully
results in only a single instruction increment instruction being emitted
(i386, x86_64) or in the increment being hidden though instruction
concurrency (EPIC architectures such as ia64 can get that done).

Benefits:
- VM event counter operations usually reduce to a single inline instruction
  on i386 and x86_64.
- No interrupt disable, only preempt disable for the preempt case.
  Preempt disable can also be avoided by moving the counter into a spinlock.
- Handling is similar to zoned VM counters.
- Simple and easily extendable.
- Can be omitted to reduce memory use for embedded use.

References:

RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113512330605497&w=2
RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114988082814934&w=2
local_t http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114991748606690&w=2
V2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=115014808400007&r=1&w=2
V3 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115024767022346&w=2
V4 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115047968808926&w=2

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:36 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
9a865ffa34 [PATCH] zoned vm counters: conversion of nr_slab to per zone counter
- Allows reclaim to access counter without looping over processor counts.

- Allows accurate statistics on how many pages are used in a zone by
  the slab. This may become useful to balance slab allocations over
  various zones.

[akpm@osdl.org: bugfix]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:35 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
34aa1330f9 [PATCH] zoned vm counters: zone_reclaim: remove /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_interval
The zone_reclaim_interval was necessary because we were not able to determine
how many unmapped pages exist in a zone.  Therefore we had to scan in
intervals to figure out if any pages were unmapped.

With the zoned counters and NR_ANON_PAGES we now know the number of pagecache
pages and the number of mapped pages in a zone.  So we can simply skip the
reclaim if there is an insufficient number of unmapped pages.  We use
SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX as the boundary.

Drop all support for /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_interval.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:35 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
f3dbd34460 [PATCH] zoned vm counters: split NR_ANON_PAGES off from NR_FILE_MAPPED
The current NR_FILE_MAPPED is used by zone reclaim and the dirty load
calculation as the number of mapped pagecache pages.  However, that is not
true.  NR_FILE_MAPPED includes the mapped anonymous pages.  This patch
separates those and therefore allows an accurate tracking of the anonymous
pages per zone.

It then becomes possible to determine the number of unmapped pages per zone
and we can avoid scanning for unmapped pages if there are none.

Also it may now be possible to determine the mapped/unmapped ratio in
get_dirty_limit.  Isnt the number of anonymous pages irrelevant in that
calculation?

Note that this will change the meaning of the number of mapped pages reported
in /proc/vmstat /proc/meminfo and in the per node statistics.  This may affect
user space tools that monitor these counters!  NR_FILE_MAPPED works like
NR_FILE_DIRTY.  It is only valid for pagecache pages.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:35 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
bf02cf4b6c [PATCH] zoned vm counters: remove NR_FILE_MAPPED from scan control structure
We can now access the number of pages in a mapped state in an inexpensive way
in shrink_active_list.  So drop the nr_mapped field from scan_control.

[akpm@osdl.org: bugfix]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:35 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
65ba55f500 [PATCH] zoned vm counters: convert nr_mapped to per zone counter
nr_mapped is important because it allows a determination of how many pages of
a zone are not mapped, which would allow a more efficient means of determining
when we need to reclaim memory in a zone.

We take the nr_mapped field out of the page state structure and define a new
per zone counter named NR_FILE_MAPPED (the anonymous pages will be split off
from NR_MAPPED in the next patch).

We replace the use of nr_mapped in various kernel locations.  This avoids the
looping over all processors in try_to_free_pages(), writeback, reclaim (swap +
zone reclaim).

[akpm@osdl.org: bugfix]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 11:25:34 -07:00
Chandra Seetharaman
9c7b216d23 [PATCH] cpu hotplug: revert init patch submitted for 2.6.17
In 2.6.17, there was a problem with cpu_notifiers and XFS.  I provided a
band-aid solution to solve that problem.  In the process, i undid all the
changes you both were making to ensure that these notifiers were available
only at init time (unless CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU is defined).

We deferred the real fix to 2.6.18.  Here is a set of patches that fixes the
XFS problem cleanly and makes the cpu notifiers available only at init time
(unless CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU is defined).

If CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU is defined then cpu notifiers are available at run
time.

This patch reverts the notifier_call changes made in 2.6.17

Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman <sekharan@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Ashok Raj <ashok.raj@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-27 17:32:40 -07:00
Yasunori Goto
3218ae14b1 [PATCH] pgdat allocation for new node add (export kswapd start func)
When node is hot-added, kswapd for the node should start.  This export kswapd
start function as kswapd_run() to use at add_memory().

[akpm@osdl.org: daemonize() isn't needed when using the kthread API]
Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: "Brown, Len" <len.brown@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-27 17:32:36 -07:00
Andrew Morton
bd1e22b8e0 [PATCH] initialise total_memory() earlier
Initialise total_memory earlier in boot.  Because if for some reason we run
page reclaim early in boot, we don't want total_memory to be zero when we use
it as a divisor.

And rename total_memory to vm_total_pages to avoid naming clashes with
architectures.

Cc: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Martin Bligh <mbligh@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-23 07:42:52 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
04e62a29bf [PATCH] More page migration: use migration entries for file pages
This implements the use of migration entries to preserve ptes of file backed
pages during migration.  Processes can therefore be migrated back and forth
without loosing their connection to pagecache pages.

Note that we implement the migration entries only for linear mappings.
Nonlinear mappings still require the unmapping of the ptes for migration.

And another writepage() ugliness shows up.  writepage() can drop the page
lock.  Therefore we have to remove migration ptes before calling writepages()
in order to avoid having migration entries point to unlocked pages.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-23 07:42:51 -07:00
OGAWA Hirofumi
111ebb6e6f [PATCH] writeback: fix range handling
When a writeback_control's `start' and `end' fields are used to
indicate a one-byte-range starting at file offset zero, the required
values of .start=0,.end=0 mean that the ->writepages() implementation
has no way of telling that it is being asked to perform a range
request.  Because we're currently overloading (start == 0 && end == 0)
to mean "this is not a write-a-range request".

To make all this sane, the patch changes range of writeback_control.

So caller does: If it is calling ->writepages() to write pages, it
sets range (range_start/end or range_cyclic) always.

And if range_cyclic is true, ->writepages() thinks the range is
cyclic, otherwise it just uses range_start and range_end.

This patch does,

    - Add LLONG_MAX, LLONG_MIN, ULLONG_MAX to include/linux/kernel.h
      -1 is usually ok for range_end (type is long long). But, if someone did,

		range_end += val;		range_end is "val - 1"
		u64val = range_end >> bits;	u64val is "~(0ULL)"

      or something, they are wrong. So, this adds LLONG_MAX to avoid nasty
      things, and uses LLONG_MAX for range_end.

    - All callers of ->writepages() sets range_start/end or range_cyclic.

    - Fix updates of ->writeback_index. It seems already bit strange.
      If it starts at 0 and ended by check of nr_to_write, this last
      index may reduce chance to scan end of file.  So, this updates
      ->writeback_index only if range_cyclic is true or whole-file is
      scanned.

Signed-off-by: OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@mail.parknet.co.jp>
Cc: Nathan Scott <nathans@sgi.com>
Cc: Anton Altaparmakov <aia21@cantab.net>
Cc: Steven French <sfrench@us.ibm.com>
Cc: "Vladimir V. Saveliev" <vs@namesys.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-23 07:42:49 -07:00
Rafael J. Wysocki
d6277db4ab [PATCH] swsusp: rework memory shrinker
Rework the swsusp's memory shrinker in the following way:

- Simplify balance_pgdat() by removing all of the swsusp-related code
  from it.

- Make shrink_all_memory() use shrink_slab() and a new function
  shrink_all_zones() which calls shrink_active_list() and
  shrink_inactive_list() directly for each zone in a way that's optimized
  for suspend.

In shrink_all_memory() we try to free exactly as many pages as the caller
asks for, preferably in one shot, starting from easier targets.   If slab
caches are huge, they are most likely to have enough pages to reclaim.
 The inactive lists are next (the zones with more inactive pages go first)
etc.

Each time shrink_all_memory() attempts to shrink the active and inactive
lists for each zone in 5 passes.   In the first pass, only the inactive
lists are taken into consideration.   In the next two passes the active
lists are also shrunk, but mapped pages are not reclaimed.   In the last
two passes the active and inactive lists are shrunk and mapped pages are
reclaimed as well.  The aim of this is to alter the reclaim logic to choose
the best pages to keep on resume and improve the responsiveness of the
resumed system.

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Signed-off-by: Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org>
Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-23 07:42:48 -07:00
Christoph Lameter
c0bbbc73d5 [PATCH] typo in vmscan.c
From: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>

Looks like a comma was left from the conversion from a struct to an
assignment.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-11 15:27:37 -07:00
Chandra Seetharaman
83d722f7e1 [PATCH] Remove __devinit and __cpuinit from notifier_call definitions
Few of the notifier_chain_register() callers use __init in the definition
of notifier_call.  It is incorrect as the function definition should be
available after the initializations (they do not unregister them during
initializations).

This patch fixes all such usages to _not_ have the notifier_call __init
section.

Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman <sekharan@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-04-26 08:30:03 -07:00
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
ec936fc563 [PATCH] for_each_online_pgdat: renaming for_each_pgdat
Replace for_each_pgdat() with for_each_online_pgdat().

Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-03-27 08:44:48 -08:00
Andrew Morton
05eeae208d [PATCH] find_task_by_pid() needs tasklist_lock
A couple of places are forgetting to take it.

The kswapd case is probably unimportant.  keventd_create_kthread() was racy.

The whole thing is a bit flakey: you start a kernel thread, get its pid from
kernel_thread() then look up its task_struct.

a) It assumes that pid recycling takes a "long" time.

b) We get a task_struct but no reference was taken on it.  The owner of the
   kswapd and kthread task_struct*'s must assume that the new thread won't
   exit unexpectedly.  Because if it does, they're left holding dead memory
   and any attempt to control or stop that task will crash.

Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-03-25 08:22:57 -08:00