linux-kernel - [PATCH v15 7/7] mm: Add free page reporting documentation

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Message-ID: <20191205162304.19548.33406.stgit@localhost.localdomain>
Date:   Thu, 05 Dec 2019 08:23:04 -0800
From:   Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>
To:     kvm@...r.kernel.org, mst@...hat.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        willy@...radead.org, mhocko@...nel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, mgorman@...hsingularity.net,
        vbabka@...e.cz
Cc:     yang.zhang.wz@...il.com, nitesh@...hat.com, konrad.wilk@...cle.com,
        david@...hat.com, pagupta@...hat.com, riel@...riel.com,
        lcapitulino@...hat.com, dave.hansen@...el.com,
        wei.w.wang@...el.com, aarcange@...hat.com, pbonzini@...hat.com,
        dan.j.williams@...el.com, alexander.h.duyck@...ux.intel.com,
        osalvador@...e.de
Subject: [PATCH v15 7/7] mm: Add free page reporting documentation

From: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...ux.intel.com>

Add documentation for free page reporting. Currently the only consumer is
virtio-balloon, however it is possible that other drivers might make use of
this so it is best to add a bit of documetation explaining at a high level
how to use the API.

Signed-off-by: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...ux.intel.com>
---
 Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst |   41 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst b/Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..33f54a450a4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/vm/free_page_reporting.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+.. _free_page_reporting:
+
+=====================
+Free Page Reporting
+=====================
+
+Free page reporting is an API by which a device can register to receive
+lists of pages that are currently unused by the system. This is useful in
+the case of virtualization where a guest is then able to use this data to
+notify the hypervisor that it is no longer using certain pages in memory.
+
+For the driver, typically a balloon driver, to use of this functionality
+it will allocate and initialize a page_reporting_dev_info structure. The
+field within the structure it will populate is the "report" function
+pointer used to process the scatterlist. It must also guarantee that it can
+handle at least PAGE_REPORTING_CAPACITY worth of scatterlist entries per
+call to the function. A call to page_reporting_register will register the
+page reporting interface with the reporting framework assuming no other
+page reporting devices are already registered.
+
+Once registered the page reporting API will begin reporting batches of
+pages to the driver. The API will start reporting pages 2 seconds after
+the interface is registered and will continue to do so 2 seconds after any
+page of a sufficiently high order is freed.
+
+Pages reported will be stored in the scatterlist passed to the reporting
+function with the final entry having the end bit set in entry nent - 1.
+While pages are being processed by the report function they will not be
+accessible to the allocator. Once the report function has been completed
+the pages will be returned to the free area from which they were obtained.
+
+Prior to removing a driver that is making use of free page reporting it
+is necessary to call page_reporting_unregister to have the
+page_reporting_dev_info structure that is currently in use by free page
+reporting removed. Doing this will prevent further reports from being
+issued via the interface. If another driver or the same driver is
+registered it is possible for it to resume where the previous driver had
+left off in terms of reporting free pages.
+
+Alexander Duyck, Dec 04, 2019
+