[PATCH v7 0/6] ksm: support tracking KSM-placed zero-pages

From: yang.yang29
Date: Thu Apr 13 2023 - 01:46:58 EST


From: xu xin <xu.xin16@xxxxxxxxxx>

The core idea of this patch set is to enable users to perceive the number
of any pages merged by KSM, regardless of whether use_zero_page switch has
been turned on, so that users can know how much free memory increase is
really due to their madvise(MERGEABLE) actions. But the problem is, when
enabling use_zero_pages, all empty pages will be merged with kernel zero
pages instead of with each other as use_zero_pages is disabled, and then
these zero-pages are no longer monitored by KSM.

The motivations to do this is seen at:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/202302100915227721315@xxxxxxxxxx/

In one word, we hope to implement the support for KSM-placed zero pages
tracking without affecting the feature of use_zero_pages, so that app
developer can also benefit from knowing the actual KSM profit by getting
KSM-placed zero pages to optimize applications eventually when
/sys/kernel/mm/ksm/use_zero_pages is enabled.

the patch uses pte_mkdirty (related with architecture) to mark KSM-placed
zero pages. Some architecture(like sparc64) treat R/O dirty PTEs as
writable, which will break KSM pages state (wrprotect) and affect
the KSM functionality. For safety, we restrict this feature only to the
tested and known-working architechtures (ARM, ARM64, and X86) fow now.

Change log
----------
v6->v7:
This is an all-newed version which is different from v6 which relys on KSM's
rmap_item. The patch series don't rely on rmap_item but pte_dirty, so the
general handling of tracking KSM-placed zero-pages is simplified a lot.

For safety, we restrict this feature only to the tested and known-working
architechtures (ARM, ARM64, and X86) fow now.

xu xin (6):
ksm: support unsharing KSM-placed zero pages
ksm: count all zero pages placed by KSM
ksm: add ksm zero pages for each process
ksm: add documentation for ksm zero pages
ksm: update the calculation of KSM profit
selftest: add a testcase of ksm zero pages

Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst | 26 +++++---
fs/proc/base.c | 3 +
include/linux/ksm.h | 27 ++++++++
include/linux/mm_types.h | 11 +++-
mm/Kconfig | 23 ++++++-
mm/ksm.c | 28 ++++++++-
mm/memory.c | 7 ++-
tools/testing/selftests/mm/ksm_functional_tests.c | 75 +++++++++++++++++++++++
8 files changed, 187 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)

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2.15.2