linux-kernel - Re: [PATCHv3 5/8] documentation: Add recompression documentation

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Message-ID: <Y04UbTZh3fJYPhvJ@google.com>
Date:   Tue, 18 Oct 2022 11:50:21 +0900
From:   Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@...omium.org>
To:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>
Cc:     Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@...omium.org>,
        Nitin Gupta <ngupta@...are.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [PATCHv3 5/8] documentation: Add recompression documentation

Document user-space visible device attributes that
are enabled by ZRAM_MULTI_COMP.

Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@...omium.org>
---
 Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.rst | 55 +++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 55 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.rst
index c73b16930449..f09e778bc3dc 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.rst
@@ -401,6 +401,61 @@ budget in next setting is user's job.
 If admin wants to measure writeback count in a certain period, they could
 know it via /sys/block/zram0/bd_stat's 3rd column.
 
+recompression
+-------------
+
+With CONFIG_ZRAM_MULTI_COMP, zram can recompress idle/huge pages using
+alternative (secondary) compression algorithm. The basic idea is that
+alternative compression algorithm can provide better compression ratio
+at a price of (potentially) slower compression/decompression speeds.
+Alternative compression algorithm can, for example, be more successful
+compressing huge pages (those that default algorithm failed to compress).
+Another application is idle pages recompression - pages that are cold and
+sit in the memory can be recompressed using more effective algorithm and,
+hence, reduce zsmalloc memory usage.
+
+With CONFIG_ZRAM_MULTI_COMP, zram will setup two compression algorithms
+per-CPU: primary and secondary ones. Primary zram compressor is explained
+in "3) Select compression algorithm", the secondary algorithm is configured
+in a similar way, using recomp_algorithm device attribute:
+
+Examples::
+
+	#show supported recompression algorithms
+	cat /sys/block/zramX/recomp_algorithm
+	zstd [lzo]
+
+	#select zstd recompression algorithm
+	echo zstd > /sys/block/zramX/recomp_algorithm
+
+Another device attribute that CONFIG_ZRAM_MULTI_COMP enables is recompress,
+which controls recompression:
+
+Examples::
+
+	#IDLE pages recompression is activated by `idle` mode
+	echo idle > /sys/block/zramX/recompress
+
+	#HUGE pages recompression is activated by `huge` mode
+	echo huge > /sys/block/zram0/recompress
+
+	#HUGE_IDLE pages recompression is activated by `huge_idle` mode
+	echo huge_idle > /sys/block/zramX/recompress
+
+The number of idle pages can be significant, so user-space can pass a size
+watermark (in bytes) value to the recompress knob, to filter out idle pages
+for recompression: zram will recompress only idle pages of equal or greater
+size (bytes):::
+
+	#recompress idle pages larger than 3000 bytes
+	echo 3000 > /sys/block/zramX/recompress
+
+	#recompress idle pages larger than 2000 bytes
+	echo 2000 > /sys/block/zramX/recompress
+
+Recompression is mostly focused on idle pages (except for huge pages
+recompression), so it works better in conjunction with memory tracking.
+
 memory tracking
 ===============
 
-- 
2.38.0.413.g74048e4d9e-goog