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authorYang Yang <yang.yang29@zte.com.cn>2022-04-29 09:16:16 +0300
committerakpm <akpm@linux-foundation.org>2022-04-29 09:16:16 +0300
commit94bfe85bde18a99612bb5d0ce348643c2d352836 (patch)
tree1090ea49642e829f743f4d020fb9ccb66065c36b /Documentation/admin-guide/mm
parent7609385337a4feb6236e42dcd0df2185683ce839 (diff)
downloadlinux-94bfe85bde18a99612bb5d0ce348643c2d352836.tar.xz
mm/vmstat: add events for ksm cow
Users may use ksm by calling madvise(, , MADV_MERGEABLE) when they want to save memory, it's a tradeoff by suffering delay on ksm cow. Users can get to know how much memory ksm saved by reading /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/pages_sharing, but they don't know what's the costs of ksm cow, and this is important of some delay sensitive tasks. So add ksm cow events to help users evaluate whether or how to use ksm. Also update Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst with new added events. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220331035616.2390805-1-yang.yang29@zte.com.cn Signed-off-by: Yang Yang <yang.yang29@zte.com.cn> Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: xu xin <xu.xin16@zte.com.cn> Reviewed-by: Ran Xiaokai <ran.xiaokai@zte.com.cn> Cc: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> Cc: Saravanan D <saravanand@fb.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org> Cc: John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/mm')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst18
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst
index 97d816791aca..b244f0202a03 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst
@@ -184,6 +184,24 @@ The maximum possible ``pages_sharing/pages_shared`` ratio is limited by the
``max_page_sharing`` tunable. To increase the ratio ``max_page_sharing`` must
be increased accordingly.
+Monitoring KSM events
+=====================
+
+There are some counters in /proc/vmstat that may be used to monitor KSM events.
+KSM might help save memory, it's a tradeoff by may suffering delay on KSM COW
+or on swapping in copy. Those events could help users evaluate whether or how
+to use KSM. For example, if cow_ksm increases too fast, user may decrease the
+range of madvise(, , MADV_MERGEABLE).
+
+cow_ksm
+ is incremented every time a KSM page triggers copy on write (COW)
+ when users try to write to a KSM page, we have to make a copy.
+
+ksm_swpin_copy
+ is incremented every time a KSM page is copied when swapping in
+ note that KSM page might be copied when swapping in because do_swap_page()
+ cannot do all the locking needed to reconstitute a cross-anon_vma KSM page.
+
--
Izik Eidus,
Hugh Dickins, 17 Nov 2009