linux-kernel - Re: [RFCv2 3/6] mm: introduce MADV

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Date:   Fri, 31 May 2019 22:44:47 +0900
From:   Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Tim Murray <timmurray@...gle.com>,
        Joel Fernandes <joel@...lfernandes.org>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
        Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>,
        Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>,
        Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@...gle.com>,
        Brian Geffon <bgeffon@...gle.com>, jannh@...gle.com,
        oleg@...hat.com, christian@...uner.io, oleksandr@...hat.com,
        hdanton@...a.com
Subject: Re: [RFCv2 3/6] mm: introduce MADV_PAGEOUT

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 10:50:44AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Fri 31-05-19 15:43:10, Minchan Kim wrote:
> > When a process expects no accesses to a certain memory range
> > for a long time, it could hint kernel that the pages can be
> > reclaimed instantly but data should be preserved for future use.
> > This could reduce workingset eviction so it ends up increasing
> > performance.
> > 
> > This patch introduces the new MADV_PAGEOUT hint to madvise(2)
> > syscall. MADV_PAGEOUT can be used by a process to mark a memory
> > range as not expected to be used for a long time so that kernel
> > reclaims the memory instantly. The hint can help kernel in deciding
> > which pages to evict proactively.
> 
> Again, are there any restictions on what kind of memory can be paged out?
> Private/Shared, anonymous/file backed. Any restrictions on mapping type.
> Etc. Please make sure all that is in the changelog.

It's same with MADV_COLD. Yes, I will include all detail in the
description.

> 
> What are the failure modes? E.g. what if the swap is full, does the call
> fails or it silently ignores the error?

In such case, just ignore the swapout. It returns -EINVAL only if the
vma is one of (VM_LOCKED|VM_HUGETLB|VM_PFNMAP) at this moment.

> 
> Thanks!
> -- 
> Michal Hocko
> SUSE Labs