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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2013-04-29 17:29:08 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2013-04-29 17:29:08 -0700
commit73154383f02998fdd6a1f26c7ef33bfc3785a101 (patch)
tree85a4c10cf32172b99aed01e95ded7269afcc9d7d /Documentation
parent362ed48dee509abe24cf84b7e137c7a29a8f4d2d (diff)
parentca0dde97178e75ed1370b8616326f5496a803d65 (diff)
Merge branch 'akpm' (incoming from Andrew)
Merge first batch of fixes from Andrew Morton: - A couple of kthread changes - A few minor audit patches - A number of fbdev patches. Florian remains AWOL so I'm picking up some of these. - A few kbuild things - ocfs2 updates - Almost all of the MM queue (And in the meantime, I already have the second big batch from Andrew pending in my mailbox ;^) * emailed patches from Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>: (149 commits) memcg: take reference before releasing rcu_read_lock mem hotunplug: fix kfree() of bootmem memory mmKconfig: add an option to disable bounce mm, nobootmem: do memset() after memblock_reserve() mm, nobootmem: clean-up of free_low_memory_core_early() fs/buffer.c: remove unnecessary init operation after allocating buffer_head. numa, cpu hotplug: change links of CPU and node when changing node number by onlining CPU mm: fix memory_hotplug.c printk format warning mm: swap: mark swap pages writeback before queueing for direct IO swap: redirty page if page write fails on swap file mm, memcg: give exiting processes access to memory reserves thp: fix huge zero page logic for page with pfn == 0 memcg: avoid accessing memcg after releasing reference fs: fix fsync() error reporting memblock: fix missing comment of memblock_insert_region() mm: Remove unused parameter of pages_correctly_reserved() firmware, memmap: fix firmware_map_entry leak mm/vmstat: add note on safety of drain_zonestat mm: thp: add split tail pages to shrink page list in page reclaim mm: allow for outstanding swap writeback accounting ...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt70
-rw-r--r--Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt50
-rw-r--r--Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting8
3 files changed, 126 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
index 8b8c28b9864..f336ede58e6 100644
--- a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ Features:
- soft limit
- moving (recharging) account at moving a task is selectable.
- usage threshold notifier
+ - memory pressure notifier
- oom-killer disable knob and oom-notifier
- Root cgroup has no limit controls.
@@ -65,6 +66,7 @@ Brief summary of control files.
memory.stat # show various statistics
memory.use_hierarchy # set/show hierarchical account enabled
memory.force_empty # trigger forced move charge to parent
+ memory.pressure_level # set memory pressure notifications
memory.swappiness # set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
(See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
memory.move_charge_at_immigrate # set/show controls of moving charges
@@ -762,7 +764,73 @@ At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
be stopped.)
-11. TODO
+11. Memory Pressure
+
+The pressure level notifications can be used to monitor the memory
+allocation cost; based on the pressure, applications can implement
+different strategies of managing their memory resources. The pressure
+levels are defined as following:
+
+The "low" level means that the system is reclaiming memory for new
+allocations. Monitoring this reclaiming activity might be useful for
+maintaining cache level. Upon notification, the program (typically
+"Activity Manager") might analyze vmstat and act in advance (i.e.
+prematurely shutdown unimportant services).
+
+The "medium" level means that the system is experiencing medium memory
+pressure, the system might be making swap, paging out active file caches,
+etc. Upon this event applications may decide to further analyze
+vmstat/zoneinfo/memcg or internal memory usage statistics and free any
+resources that can be easily reconstructed or re-read from a disk.
+
+The "critical" level means that the system is actively thrashing, it is
+about to out of memory (OOM) or even the in-kernel OOM killer is on its
+way to trigger. Applications should do whatever they can to help the
+system. It might be too late to consult with vmstat or any other
+statistics, so it's advisable to take an immediate action.
+
+The events are propagated upward until the event is handled, i.e. the
+events are not pass-through. Here is what this means: for example you have
+three cgroups: A->B->C. Now you set up an event listener on cgroups A, B
+and C, and suppose group C experiences some pressure. In this situation,
+only group C will receive the notification, i.e. groups A and B will not
+receive it. This is done to avoid excessive "broadcasting" of messages,
+which disturbs the system and which is especially bad if we are low on
+memory or thrashing. So, organize the cgroups wisely, or propagate the
+events manually (or, ask us to implement the pass-through events,
+explaining why would you need them.)
+
+The file memory.pressure_level is only used to setup an eventfd. To
+register a notification, an application must:
+
+- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
+- open memory.pressure_level;
+- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.pressure_level> <level>"
+ to cgroup.event_control.
+
+Application will be notified through eventfd when memory pressure is at
+the specific level (or higher). Read/write operations to
+memory.pressure_level are no implemented.
+
+Test:
+
+ Here is a small script example that makes a new cgroup, sets up a
+ memory limit, sets up a notification in the cgroup and then makes child
+ cgroup experience a critical pressure:
+
+ # cd /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/
+ # mkdir foo
+ # cd foo
+ # cgroup_event_listener memory.pressure_level low &
+ # echo 8000000 > memory.limit_in_bytes
+ # echo 8000000 > memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
+ # echo $$ > tasks
+ # dd if=/dev/zero | read x
+
+ (Expect a bunch of notifications, and eventually, the oom-killer will
+ trigger.)
+
+12. TODO
1. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
2. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 078701fdbd4..dcc75a9ed91 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ files can be found in mm/swap.c.
Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
+- admin_reserve_kbytes
- block_dump
- compact_memory
- dirty_background_bytes
@@ -53,11 +54,41 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
- percpu_pagelist_fraction
- stat_interval
- swappiness
+- user_reserve_kbytes
- vfs_cache_pressure
- zone_reclaim_mode
==============================================================
+admin_reserve_kbytes
+
+The amount of free memory in the system that should be reserved for users
+with the capability cap_sys_admin.
+
+admin_reserve_kbytes defaults to min(3% of free pages, 8MB)
+
+That should provide enough for the admin to log in and kill a process,
+if necessary, under the default overcommit 'guess' mode.
+
+Systems running under overcommit 'never' should increase this to account
+for the full Virtual Memory Size of programs used to recover. Otherwise,
+root may not be able to log in to recover the system.
+
+How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve?
+
+sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.)
+
+For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS).
+On x86_64 this is about 8MB.
+
+For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ)
+and add the sum of their RSS.
+On x86_64 this is about 128MB.
+
+Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory.
+
+==============================================================
+
block_dump
block_dump enables block I/O debugging when set to a nonzero value. More
@@ -542,6 +573,7 @@ memory until it actually runs out.
When this flag is 2, the kernel uses a "never overcommit"
policy that attempts to prevent any overcommit of memory.
+Note that user_reserve_kbytes affects this policy.
This feature can be very useful because there are a lot of
programs that malloc() huge amounts of memory "just-in-case"
@@ -645,6 +677,24 @@ The default value is 60.
==============================================================
+- user_reserve_kbytes
+
+When overcommit_memory is set to 2, "never overommit" mode, reserve
+min(3% of current process size, user_reserve_kbytes) of free memory.
+This is intended to prevent a user from starting a single memory hogging
+process, such that they cannot recover (kill the hog).
+
+user_reserve_kbytes defaults to min(3% of the current process size, 128MB).
+
+If this is reduced to zero, then the user will be allowed to allocate
+all free memory with a single process, minus admin_reserve_kbytes.
+Any subsequent attempts to execute a command will result in
+"fork: Cannot allocate memory".
+
+Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory.
+
+==============================================================
+
vfs_cache_pressure
------------------
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting b/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting
index 706d7ed9d8d..8eaa2fc4b8f 100644
--- a/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting
+++ b/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting
@@ -8,7 +8,9 @@ The Linux kernel supports the following overcommit handling modes
default.
1 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific
- applications.
+ applications. Classic example is code using sparse arrays
+ and just relying on the virtual memory consisting almost
+ entirely of zero pages.
2 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit
for the system is not permitted to exceed swap + a
@@ -18,6 +20,10 @@ The Linux kernel supports the following overcommit handling modes
pages but will receive errors on memory allocation as
appropriate.
+ Useful for applications that want to guarantee their
+ memory allocations will be available in the future
+ without having to initialize every page.
+
The overcommit policy is set via the sysctl `vm.overcommit_memory'.
The overcommit percentage is set via `vm.overcommit_ratio'.