From 0f8975ec4db2c8b5bd111b211292ca9be0feb6b8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Pavel Emelyanov Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2013 15:01:20 -0700 Subject: mm: soft-dirty bits for user memory changes tracking The soft-dirty is a bit on a PTE which helps to track which pages a task writes to. In order to do this tracking one should 1. Clear soft-dirty bits from PTEs ("echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs) 2. Wait some time. 3. Read soft-dirty bits (55'th in /proc/PID/pagemap2 entries) To do this tracking, the writable bit is cleared from PTEs when the soft-dirty bit is. Thus, after this, when the task tries to modify a page at some virtual address the #PF occurs and the kernel sets the soft-dirty bit on the respective PTE. Note, that although all the task's address space is marked as r/o after the soft-dirty bits clear, the #PF-s that occur after that are processed fast. This is so, since the pages are still mapped to physical memory, and thus all the kernel does is finds this fact out and puts back writable, dirty and soft-dirty bits on the PTE. Another thing to note, is that when mremap moves PTEs they are marked with soft-dirty as well, since from the user perspective mremap modifies the virtual memory at mremap's new address. Signed-off-by: Pavel Emelyanov Cc: Matt Mackall Cc: Xiao Guangrong Cc: Glauber Costa Cc: Marcelo Tosatti Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro Cc: Stephen Rothwell Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt | 7 ++++++- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt') diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt index fd8d0d594fc..fcc22c982a2 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt @@ -473,7 +473,8 @@ This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is enabled. The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG -bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process. +bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the +soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/vm/soft-dirty.txt for details). To clear the bits for all the pages associated with the process > echo 1 > /proc/PID/clear_refs @@ -482,6 +483,10 @@ To clear the bits for the anonymous pages associated with the process To clear the bits for the file mapped pages associated with the process > echo 3 > /proc/PID/clear_refs + +To clear the soft-dirty bit + > echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs + Any other value written to /proc/PID/clear_refs will have no effect. The /proc/pid/pagemap gives the PFN, which can be used to find the pageflags -- cgit v1.2.3