linux-kernel - Re: [RESEND PATCH 1/2 -mm] mm: account lazy free pages separately

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Date:   Fri, 9 Aug 2019 10:32:16 +0200
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
To:     Yang Shi <yang.shi@...ux.alibaba.com>
Cc:     kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com, hannes@...xchg.org,
        vbabka@...e.cz, rientjes@...gle.com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RESEND PATCH 1/2 -mm] mm: account lazy free pages separately

On Fri 09-08-19 07:57:44, Yang Shi wrote:
> When doing partial unmap to THP, the pages in the affected range would
> be considered to be reclaimable when memory pressure comes in.  And,
> such pages would be put on deferred split queue and get minus from the
> memory statistics (i.e. /proc/meminfo).
> 
> For example, when doing THP split test, /proc/meminfo would show:
> 
> Before put on lazy free list:
> MemTotal:       45288336 kB
> MemFree:        43281376 kB
> MemAvailable:   43254048 kB
> ...
> Active(anon):    1096296 kB
> Inactive(anon):     8372 kB
> ...
> AnonPages:       1096264 kB
> ...
> AnonHugePages:   1056768 kB
> 
> After put on lazy free list:
> MemTotal:       45288336 kB
> MemFree:        43282612 kB
> MemAvailable:   43255284 kB
> ...
> Active(anon):    1094228 kB
> Inactive(anon):     8372 kB
> ...
> AnonPages:         49668 kB
> ...
> AnonHugePages:     10240 kB
> 
> The THPs confusingly look disappeared although they are still on LRU if
> you are not familair the tricks done by kernel.

Is this a fallout of the recent deferred freeing work?

> Accounted the lazy free pages to NR_LAZYFREE, and show them in meminfo
> and other places.  With the change the /proc/meminfo would look like:
> Before put on lazy free list:

The name is really confusing because I have thought of MADV_FREE immediately.

> +LazyFreePages: Cleanly freeable pages under memory pressure (i.e. deferred
> +               split THP).

What does that mean actually? I have hard time imagine what cleanly
freeable pages mean.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs