linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/1] mm, shmem: map few pages around fault address if they are in page cache

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>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Mon, 3 Mar 2014 15:29:00 -0800
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Ning Qu <quning@...il.com>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	"Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
	Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>,
	Matthew Wilcox <matthew.r.wilcox@...el.com>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
	linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/1] mm, shmem: map few pages around fault address if they
 are in page cache

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 2:38 PM, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> When the file is uncached, results are peculiar:
>
> 0.00user 2.84system 0:50.90elapsed 5%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4198096maxresident)k
> 0inputs+0outputs (1major+49666minor)pagefaults 0swaps
>
> That's approximately 3x more minor faults.

This is not peculiar.

When the file is uncached, some pages will obviously be under IO due
to readahead etc. And the fault-around code very much on purpose will
*not* try to wait for those pages, so any busy pages will just simply
not be faulted-around.

So you should still have fewer minor faults than faulting on *every*
page (ie the non-fault-around case), but I would very much expect that
fault-around will not see the full "one sixteenth" reduction in minor
faults.

And the order of IO will not matter, since the read-ahead is
asynchronous wrt the page-faults.

             Linus
--
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/