[PATCH 1/4] Properly account for the number of page cache pages zone_reclaim() can reclaim

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Tue Jun 09 2009 - 13:02:19 EST


On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that
is a more targetted form of direct reclaim. On machines with large NUMA
distances for example, a zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that clean
unmapped pages will be reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not being met.

There is a heuristic that determines if the scan is worthwhile but the
problem is that the heuristic is not being properly applied and is basically
assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 if it is enabled.

Historically, once enabled it was depending on NR_FILE_PAGES which may
include swapcache pages that the reclaim_mode cannot deal with. Patch
vmscan-change-the-number-of-the-unmapped-files-in-zone-reclaim.patch by
Kosaki Motohiro noted that zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES) included
pages that were not file-backed such as swapcache and made a calculation
based on the inactive, active and mapped files. This is far superior
when zone_reclaim==1 but if RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then NR_FILE_PAGES is a
reasonable starting figure.

This patch alters how zone_reclaim() works out how many pages it might be
able to reclaim given the current reclaim_mode. If RECLAIM_SWAP is set
in the reclaim_mode it will either consider NR_FILE_PAGES as potential
candidates or else use NR_{IN}ACTIVE}_PAGES-NR_FILE_MAPPED to discount
swapcache and other non-file-backed pages. If RECLAIM_WRITE is not set,
then NR_FILE_DIRTY number of pages are not candidates. If RECLAIM_SWAP is
not set, then NR_FILE_MAPPED are not.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/vmscan.c | 52 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
1 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index 2ddcfc8..2bfc76e 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -2333,6 +2333,41 @@ int sysctl_min_unmapped_ratio = 1;
*/
int sysctl_min_slab_ratio = 5;

+static inline unsigned long zone_unmapped_file_pages(struct zone *zone)
+{
+ return zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
+ zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) -
+ zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
+}
+
+/* Work out how many page cache pages we can reclaim in this reclaim_mode */
+static inline long zone_pagecache_reclaimable(struct zone *zone)
+{
+ long nr_pagecache_reclaimable;
+ long delta = 0;
+
+ /*
+ * If RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then all file pages are considered
+ * potentially reclaimable. Otherwise, we have to worry about
+ * pages like swapcache and zone_unmapped_file_pages() provides
+ * a better estimate
+ */
+ if (zone_reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_SWAP)
+ nr_pagecache_reclaimable = zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES);
+ else
+ nr_pagecache_reclaimable = zone_unmapped_file_pages(zone);
+
+ /* If we can't clean pages, remove dirty pages from consideration */
+ if (!(zone_reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_WRITE))
+ delta += zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_DIRTY);
+
+ /* Beware of double accounting */
+ if (delta < nr_pagecache_reclaimable)
+ nr_pagecache_reclaimable -= delta;
+
+ return nr_pagecache_reclaimable;
+}
+
/*
* Try to free up some pages from this zone through reclaim.
*/
@@ -2355,7 +2390,6 @@ static int __zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
.isolate_pages = isolate_pages_global,
};
unsigned long slab_reclaimable;
- long nr_unmapped_file_pages;

disable_swap_token();
cond_resched();
@@ -2368,11 +2402,7 @@ static int __zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
reclaim_state.reclaimed_slab = 0;
p->reclaim_state = &reclaim_state;

- nr_unmapped_file_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
- zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) -
- zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
-
- if (nr_unmapped_file_pages > zone->min_unmapped_pages) {
+ if (zone_pagecache_reclaimable(zone) > zone->min_unmapped_pages) {
/*
* Free memory by calling shrink zone with increasing
* priorities until we have enough memory freed.
@@ -2419,8 +2449,6 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
{
int node_id;
int ret;
- long nr_unmapped_file_pages;
- long nr_slab_reclaimable;

/*
* Zone reclaim reclaims unmapped file backed pages and
@@ -2432,12 +2460,8 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_t gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
* if less than a specified percentage of the zone is used by
* unmapped file backed pages.
*/
- nr_unmapped_file_pages = zone_page_state(zone, NR_INACTIVE_FILE) +
- zone_page_state(zone, NR_ACTIVE_FILE) -
- zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_MAPPED);
- nr_slab_reclaimable = zone_page_state(zone, NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE);
- if (nr_unmapped_file_pages <= zone->min_unmapped_pages &&
- nr_slab_reclaimable <= zone->min_slab_pages)
+ if (zone_pagecache_reclaimable(zone) <= zone->min_unmapped_pages &&
+ zone_page_state(zone, NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE) <= zone->min_slab_pages)
return 0;

if (zone_is_all_unreclaimable(zone))
--
1.5.6.5

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