linux-stable.git/include/linux/mmzone.h, branch linux-2.6.19.y

[PATCH] vmscan: Fix temp_priority race

2006-10-28T18:30:50+00:00

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 

__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 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] Reintroduce NODES_SPAN_OTHER_NODES for powerpc

2006-10-21T20:35:06+00:00

Reintroduce NODES_SPAN_OTHER_NODES for powerpc

Revert "[PATCH] Remove SPAN_OTHER_NODES config definition"
    This reverts commit f62859bb6871c5e4a8e591c60befc8caaf54db8c.
Revert "[PATCH] mm: remove arch independent NODES_SPAN_OTHER_NODES"
    This reverts commit a94b3ab7eab4edcc9b2cb474b188f774c331adf7.

Also update the comments to indicate that this is still required
and where its used.

Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft 
Cc: Paul Mackerras 
Cc: Mike Kravetz 
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt 
Acked-by: Mel Gorman 
Acked-by: Will Schmidt 
Cc: Christoph Lameter 
Cc: 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] Add node to zone for the NUMA case

2006-09-27T15:26:13+00:00

Add the node in order to optimize zone_to_nid.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Acked-by: Paul Jackson 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] own header file for struct page

2006-09-27T15:26:12+00:00

This moves the definition of struct page from mm.h to its own header file
page-struct.h.  This is a prereq to fix SetPageUptodate which is broken on
s390:

#define SetPageUptodate(_page)
       do {
               struct page *__page = (_page);
               if (!test_and_set_bit(PG_uptodate, &__page->flags))
                       page_test_and_clear_dirty(_page);
       } while (0)

_page gets used twice in this macro which can cause subtle bugs.  Using
__page for the page_test_and_clear_dirty call doesn't work since it causes
yet another problem with the page_test_and_clear_dirty macro as well.

In order to avoid all these problems caused by macros it seems to be a good
idea to get rid of them and convert them to static inline functions.
Because of header file include order it's necessary to have a seperate
header file for the struct page definition.

Cc: Martin Schwidefsky 
Signed-off-by: Heiko Carstens 
Cc: Roman Zippel 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] vm: add per-zone writeout counter

2006-09-27T15:26:12+00:00

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 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] Introduce mechanism for registering active regions of memory

2006-09-27T15:26:11+00:00

At a basic level, architectures define structures to record where active
ranges of page frames are located.  Once located, the code to calculate zone
sizes and holes in each architecture is very similar.  Some of this zone and
hole sizing code is difficult to read for no good reason.  This set of patches
eliminates the similar-looking architecture-specific code.

The patches introduce a mechanism where architectures register where the
active ranges of page frames are with add_active_range().  When all areas have
been discovered, free_area_init_nodes() is called to initialise the pgdat and
zones.  The zone sizes and holes are then calculated in an architecture
independent manner.

Patch 1 introduces the mechanism for registering and initialising PFN ranges
Patch 2 changes ppc to use the mechanism - 139 arch-specific LOC removed
Patch 3 changes x86 to use the mechanism - 136 arch-specific LOC removed
Patch 4 changes x86_64 to use the mechanism - 74 arch-specific LOC removed
Patch 5 changes ia64 to use the mechanism - 52 arch-specific LOC removed
Patch 6 accounts for mem_map as a memory hole as the pages are not reclaimable.
	It adjusts the watermarks slightly

Tony Luck has successfully tested for ia64 on Itanium with tiger_defconfig,
gensparse_defconfig and defconfig.  Bob Picco has also tested and debugged on
IA64.  Jack Steiner successfully boot tested on a mammoth SGI IA64-based
machine.  These were on patches against 2.6.17-rc1 and release 3 of these
patches but there have been no ia64-changes since release 3.

There are differences in the zone sizes for x86_64 as the arch-specific code
for x86_64 accounts the kernel image and the starting mem_maps as memory holes
but the architecture-independent code accounts the memory as present.

The big benefit of this set of patches is a sizable reduction of
architecture-specific code, some of which is very hairy.  There should be a
greater reduction when other architectures use the same mechanisms for zone
and hole sizing but I lack the hardware to test on.

Additional credit;
	Dave Hansen for the initial suggestion and comments on early patches
	Andy Whitcroft for reviewing early versions and catching numerous
		errors
	Tony Luck for testing and debugging on IA64
	Bob Picco for fixing bugs related to pfn registration, reviewing a
		number of patch revisions, providing a number of suggestions
		on future direction and testing heavily
	Jack Steiner and Robin Holt for testing on IA64 and clarifying
		issues related to memory holes
	Yasunori for testing on IA64
	Andi Kleen for reviewing and feeding back about x86_64
	Christian Kujau for providing valuable information related to ACPI
		problems on x86_64 and testing potential fixes

This patch:

Define the structure to represent an active range of page frames within a node
in an architecture independent manner.  Architectures are expected to register
active ranges of PFNs using add_active_range(nid, start_pfn, end_pfn) and call
free_area_init_nodes() passing the PFNs of the end of each zone.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Signed-off-by: Bob Picco 
Cc: Dave Hansen 
Cc: Andy Whitcroft 
Cc: Andi Kleen 
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt 
Cc: Paul Mackerras 
Cc: "Keith Mannthey" 
Cc: "Luck, Tony" 
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki 
Cc: Yasunori Goto 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim

2006-09-26T15:48:51+00:00

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 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] ZVC: Support NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE / NR_SLAB_UNRECLAIMABLE

2006-09-26T15:48:51+00:00

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 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] Replace min_unmapped_ratio by min_unmapped_pages in struct zone

2006-09-26T15:48:51+00:00

*_pages is a better description of the role of the variable.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] linearly index zone->node_zonelists[]

2006-09-26T15:48:47+00:00

I wonder why we need this bitmask indexing into zone->node_zonelists[]?

We always start with the highest zone and then include all lower zones
if we build zonelists.

Are there really cases where we need allocation from ZONE_DMA or
ZONE_HIGHMEM but not ZONE_NORMAL? It seems that the current implementation
of highest_zone() makes that already impossible.

If we go linear on the index then gfp_zone() == highest_zone() and a lot
of definitions fall by the wayside.

We can now revert back to the use of gfp_zone() in mempolicy.c ;-)

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds