diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt | 79 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt | 23 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | 12 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt | 8 |
4 files changed, 116 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt index 4f4563277864..71daa35ec2d9 100644 --- a/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt +++ b/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt @@ -327,6 +327,85 @@ supported and the interface files "release_agent" and - use_hierarchy is on by default and the cgroup file for the flag is not created. +- The original lower boundary, the soft limit, is defined as a limit + that is per default unset. As a result, the set of cgroups that + global reclaim prefers is opt-in, rather than opt-out. The costs + for optimizing these mostly negative lookups are so high that the + implementation, despite its enormous size, does not even provide the + basic desirable behavior. First off, the soft limit has no + hierarchical meaning. All configured groups are organized in a + global rbtree and treated like equal peers, regardless where they + are located in the hierarchy. This makes subtree delegation + impossible. Second, the soft limit reclaim pass is so aggressive + that it not just introduces high allocation latencies into the + system, but also impacts system performance due to overreclaim, to + the point where the feature becomes self-defeating. + + The memory.low boundary on the other hand is a top-down allocated + reserve. A cgroup enjoys reclaim protection when it and all its + ancestors are below their low boundaries, which makes delegation of + subtrees possible. Secondly, new cgroups have no reserve per + default and in the common case most cgroups are eligible for the + preferred reclaim pass. This allows the new low boundary to be + efficiently implemented with just a minor addition to the generic + reclaim code, without the need for out-of-band data structures and + reclaim passes. Because the generic reclaim code considers all + cgroups except for the ones running low in the preferred first + reclaim pass, overreclaim of individual groups is eliminated as + well, resulting in much better overall workload performance. + +- The original high boundary, the hard limit, is defined as a strict + limit that can not budge, even if the OOM killer has to be called. + But this generally goes against the goal of making the most out of + the available memory. The memory consumption of workloads varies + during runtime, and that requires users to overcommit. But doing + that with a strict upper limit requires either a fairly accurate + prediction of the working set size or adding slack to the limit. + Since working set size estimation is hard and error prone, and + getting it wrong results in OOM kills, most users tend to err on the + side of a looser limit and end up wasting precious resources. + + The memory.high boundary on the other hand can be set much more + conservatively. When hit, it throttles allocations by forcing them + into direct reclaim to work off the excess, but it never invokes the + OOM killer. As a result, a high boundary that is chosen too + aggressively will not terminate the processes, but instead it will + lead to gradual performance degradation. The user can monitor this + and make corrections until the minimal memory footprint that still + gives acceptable performance is found. + + In extreme cases, with many concurrent allocations and a complete + breakdown of reclaim progress within the group, the high boundary + can be exceeded. But even then it's mostly better to satisfy the + allocation from the slack available in other groups or the rest of + the system than killing the group. Otherwise, memory.max is there + to limit this type of spillover and ultimately contain buggy or even + malicious applications. + +- The original control file names are unwieldy and inconsistent in + many different ways. For example, the upper boundary hit count is + exported in the memory.failcnt file, but an OOM event count has to + be manually counted by listening to memory.oom_control events, and + lower boundary / soft limit events have to be counted by first + setting a threshold for that value and then counting those events. + Also, usage and limit files encode their units in the filename. + That makes the filenames very long, even though this is not + information that a user needs to be reminded of every time they type + out those names. + + To address these naming issues, as well as to signal clearly that + the new interface carries a new configuration model, the naming + conventions in it necessarily differ from the old interface. + +- The original limit files indicate the state of an unset limit with a + Very High Number, and a configured limit can be unset by echoing -1 + into those files. But that very high number is implementation and + architecture dependent and not very descriptive. And while -1 can + be understood as an underflow into the highest possible value, -2 or + -10M etc. do not work, so it's not consistent. + + memory.low, memory.high, and memory.max will use the string + "infinity" to indicate and set the highest possible value. 5. Planned Changes diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt index 79b3cc821e7b..cf8fc2f0b34b 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt @@ -42,6 +42,7 @@ Table of Contents 3.6 /proc/<pid>/comm & /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm 3.7 /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children - Information about task children 3.8 /proc/<pid>/fdinfo/<fd> - Information about opened file + 3.9 /proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files 4 Configuring procfs 4.1 Mount options @@ -1763,6 +1764,28 @@ pair provide additional information particular to the objects they represent. with TIMER_ABSTIME option which will be shown in 'settime flags', but 'it_value' still exhibits timer's remaining time. +3.9 /proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files +--------------------------------------------------------------------- +This directory contains symbolic links which represent memory mapped files +the process is maintaining. Example output: + + | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c600000-333c620000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so + | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c81f000-333c820000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so + | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c820000-333c821000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so + | ... + | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 35d0421000-35d0422000 -> /usr/lib64/libselinux.so.1 + | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 400000-41a000 -> /usr/bin/ls + +The name of a link represents the virtual memory bounds of a mapping, i.e. +vm_area_struct::vm_start-vm_area_struct::vm_end. + +The main purpose of the map_files is to retrieve a set of memory mapped +files in a fast way instead of parsing /proc/<pid>/maps or +/proc/<pid>/smaps, both of which contain many more records. At the same +time one can open(2) mappings from the listings of two processes and +comparing their inode numbers to figure out which anonymous memory areas +are actually shared. + ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Configuring procfs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt index de3afef76837..902b4574acfb 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt @@ -555,12 +555,12 @@ this is causing problems for your system/application. oom_dump_tasks -Enables a system-wide task dump (excluding kernel threads) to be -produced when the kernel performs an OOM-killing and includes such -information as pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, nr_ptes, swapents, -oom_score_adj score, and name. This is helpful to determine why the -OOM killer was invoked, to identify the rogue task that caused it, -and to determine why the OOM killer chose the task it did to kill. +Enables a system-wide task dump (excluding kernel threads) to be produced +when the kernel performs an OOM-killing and includes such information as +pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, nr_ptes, nr_pmds, swapents, oom_score_adj +score, and name. This is helpful to determine why the OOM killer was +invoked, to identify the rogue task that caused it, and to determine why +the OOM killer chose the task it did to kill. If this is set to zero, this information is suppressed. On very large systems with thousands of tasks it may not be feasible to dump diff --git a/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt b/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt index 5948e455c4d2..6fbd55ef6b45 100644 --- a/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt +++ b/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt @@ -62,6 +62,8 @@ There are three components to pagemap: 20. NOPAGE 21. KSM 22. THP + 23. BALLOON + 24. ZERO_PAGE Short descriptions to the page flags: @@ -102,6 +104,12 @@ Short descriptions to the page flags: 22. THP contiguous pages which construct transparent hugepages +23. BALLOON + balloon compaction page + +24. ZERO_PAGE + zero page for pfn_zero or huge_zero page + [IO related page flags] 1. ERROR IO error occurred 3. UPTODATE page has up-to-date data |