linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/13] maps: pagemap, kpagemap, and related cleanups

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Date:	Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:24:51 -0500
From:	Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	William Lee Irwin III <wli@...omorphy.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/13] maps: pagemap, kpagemap, and related cleanups

On Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 10:03:56AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:24:36 -0500 Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com> wrote:
> 
> > > It *will* be viable.  If the application wants to know if a page is dirty,
> > > it looks up "PG_dirty" in /proc/pg_foo-to-bitnumber and uses PG_dirty's
> > > numerical offset when inspecting fields in /proc/kpagemap.  If correctly
> > > designed, such a monitoring application will be able to report upon page
> > > flags which we haven't even thought up yet.
> > 
> > We can probably fit this in the existing (variable-sized) header.
> 
> hm, OK..
> 
> > > > I wonder what they are needed for.
> > > 
> > > Poking deeply into the kernel to provide information about kernel state. 
> > > 
> > > There are real-world needs for this, and the people who develop tools to
> > > process this information will have decent kernel understanding and will
> > > know that the file's contents may alter across kernel versions.  It sure
> > > beats poking around in /dev/kmem.
> > > 
> > > I doubt if there's a sensible way in which we can prettify this interface
> > > without losing information.  But we should aim to make it as robust as
> > > possible agaisnt future kenrel changes, of course.
> > > 
> > > And we should satisfy ourselves that all the required information has been
> > > made available.  The fact that it will satisfy the Oracle requirement is
> > > encouraging.
> > > 
> > > Matt, these changes make the new field in /proc/pid/smaps redundant, don't
> > > they?
> > 
> > Which new field?
> 
> Referenced:
> 
> > From /proc/kpagemap + /proc/*/pagemap, you can
> > basically synthesize any statistic you want, including all the
> > existing ones. For some data, /proc/pid/smaps (or /proc/meminfo) will
> > be considerably more efficient.
> 
> You'd need to poke clear_refs beforehand to make the referenced bits useful.
> 
> Actually, we also need to run around the ptes and collect the pte-referenced
> bits too.  I don't think your code copes with any of that?

No, and it probably should. Perhaps dirty as well, though I've kindof
lost the plot on how that works lately.

> > But in general, most of the statistics in smaps are basically useless
> > for shared mappings, just like RSS. Problem is, we really don't know
> > what statistics we want yet, or even if it can be distilled down to
> > simple numbers anyway.
> 
> yup.  But that's the whole point, really: don't prejudge what info userspace
> is trying to collect.

Right.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.
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