Re: [PATCH 04/12] Export fragmentation index via /proc/pagetypeinfo

From: Minchan Kim
Date: Thu Feb 18 2010 - 10:38:13 EST


On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 12:00 +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> Fragmentation index is a value that makes sense when an allocation of a
> given size would fail. The index indicates whether an allocation failure is
> due to a lack of memory (values towards 0) or due to external fragmentation
> (value towards 1). For the most part, the huge page size will be the size
> of interest but not necessarily so it is exported on a per-order and per-zone
> basis via /proc/pagetypeinfo.
>
> The index is normally calculated as a value between 0 and 1 which is
> obviously unsuitable within the kernel. Instead, the first three decimal
> places are used as a value between 0 and 1000 for an integer approximation.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@xxxxxxxxx>

> ---
> Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt | 11 ++++++
> mm/vmstat.c | 63 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 2 files changed, 74 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
> index 0968a81..06bf53c 100644
> --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
> @@ -618,6 +618,10 @@ Unusable free space index at order
> Node 0, zone DMA 0 0 0 2 6 18 34 67 99 227 485
> Node 0, zone DMA32 0 0 1 2 4 7 10 17 23 31 34
>
> +Fragmentation index at order
> +Node 0, zone DMA -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
> +Node 0, zone DMA32 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
> +
> Number of blocks type Unmovable Reclaimable Movable Reserve Isolate
> Node 0, zone DMA 2 0 5 1 0
> Node 0, zone DMA32 41 6 967 2 0
> @@ -639,6 +643,13 @@ value between 0 and 1000. The higher the value, the more of free memory is
> unusable and by implication, the worse the external fragmentation is. The
> percentage of unusable free memory can be found by dividing this value by 10.
>
> +The fragmentation index, is only meaningful if an allocation would fail and
> +indicates what the failure is due to. A value of -1 such as in the example
> +states that the allocation would succeed. If it would fail, the value is
> +between 0 and 1000. A value tending towards 0 implies the allocation failed
> +due to a lack of memory. A value tending towards 1000 implies it failed
> +due to external fragmentation.
> +
> If min_free_kbytes has been tuned correctly (recommendations made by hugeadm
> from libhugetlbfs http://sourceforge.net/projects/libhugetlbfs/), one can
> make an estimate of the likely number of huge pages that can be allocated
> diff --git a/mm/vmstat.c b/mm/vmstat.c
> index d05d610..e2d0cc1 100644
> --- a/mm/vmstat.c
> +++ b/mm/vmstat.c
> @@ -494,6 +494,35 @@ static void fill_contig_page_info(struct zone *zone,
> }
>
> /*
> + * A fragmentation index only makes sense if an allocation of a requested
> + * size would fail. If that is true, the fragmentation index indicates
> + * whether external fragmentation or a lack of memory was the problem.
> + * The value can be used to determine if page reclaim or compaction
> + * should be used
> + */
> +int fragmentation_index(struct zone *zone,

Like previous [3/12], why do you remain "zone" argument?
If you will use it in future, I don't care. It's just trivial.

--
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim


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