linux-kernel - [PATCH RESEND] avoid swapping out with swappiness==0

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Wed, 23 May 2012 16:41:04 -0400
From:	Satoru Moriya <satoru.moriya@....com>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>
CC:	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	"lwoodman@...hat.com" <lwoodman@...hat.com>,
	"jweiner@...hat.com" <jweiner@...hat.com>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	Richard Davies <richard.davies@...stichosts.com>,
	Seiji Aguchi <seiji.aguchi@....com>,
	"dle-develop@...ts.sourceforge.net" 
	<dle-develop@...ts.sourceforge.net>,
	Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
	Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@...hat.com>,
	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>
Subject: [PATCH RESEND] avoid swapping out with swappiness==0

Hi Andrew,

This patch has been reviewed for couple of months.

This patch *only* improves the behavior when the kernel has
enough filebacked pages. It means that it does not change
the behavior when kernel has small number of filebacked pages.

Kosaki-san pointed out that the threshold which we use
to decide whether filebacked page is enough or not is not
appropriate(*).

(*) http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mm/msg32380.html

As I described in (**), I believe that threshold discussion
should be done in other thread because it affects not only
swappiness=0 case and the kernel behave the same way with
or without this patch below the threshold.

(**) http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mm/msg34317.html

The patch may not be perfect but, at least, we can improve
the kernel behavior in the enough filebacked memory case
with this patch. I believe it's better than nothing.

Do you have any comments about it?

NOTE: I updated the patch with Acked-by tags

---
Sometimes we'd like to avoid swapping out anonymous memory
in particular, avoid swapping out pages of important process or
process groups while there is a reasonable amount of pagecache
on RAM so that we can satisfy our customers' requirements.

OTOH, we can control how aggressive the kernel will swap memory pages
with /proc/sys/vm/swappiness for global and
/sys/fs/cgroup/memory/memory.swappiness for each memcg.

But with current reclaim implementation, the kernel may swap out
even if we set swappiness==0 and there is pagecache on RAM.

This patch changes the behavior with swappiness==0. If we set
swappiness==0, the kernel does not swap out completely
(for global reclaim until the amount of free pages and filebacked
pages in a zone has been reduced to something very very small
(nr_free + nr_filebacked < high watermark)).

Any comments are welcome.

Regards,
Satoru Moriya

Signed-off-by: Satoru Moriya <satoru.moriya@....com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>
Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>

---
 mm/vmscan.c |    6 +++---
 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 33dc256..52d64bf 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -1983,10 +1983,10 @@ static void get_scan_count(struct mem_cgroup_zone *mz, struct scan_control *sc,
 	 * proportional to the fraction of recently scanned pages on
 	 * each list that were recently referenced and in active use.
 	 */
-	ap = (anon_prio + 1) * (reclaim_stat->recent_scanned[0] + 1);
+	ap = anon_prio * (reclaim_stat->recent_scanned[0] + 1);
 	ap /= reclaim_stat->recent_rotated[0] + 1;

-	fp = (file_prio + 1) * (reclaim_stat->recent_scanned[1] + 1);
+	fp = file_prio * (reclaim_stat->recent_scanned[1] + 1);
 	fp /= reclaim_stat->recent_rotated[1] + 1;
 	spin_unlock_irq(&mz->zone->lru_lock);

@@ -1999,7 +1999,7 @@ out:
 		unsigned long scan;

 		scan = zone_nr_lru_pages(mz, lru);
-		if (priority || noswap) {
+		if (priority || noswap || !vmscan_swappiness(mz, sc)) {
 			scan >>= priority;
 			if (!scan && force_scan)
 				scan = SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX;
--
1.7.6.5
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/