linux/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt

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Documentation for /proc/sys/vm/* kernel version 2.6.29
(c) 1998, 1999, Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>
(c) 2008 Peter W. Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com>
For general info and legal blurb, please look in README.
==============================================================
This file contains the documentation for the sysctl files in
/proc/sys/vm and is valid for Linux kernel version 2.6.29.
The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation
of the virtual memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel and
the writeout of dirty data to disk.
Default values and initialization routines for most of these
files can be found in mm/swap.c.
Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
- admin_reserve_kbytes
- block_dump
- compact_memory
- dirty_background_bytes
- dirty_background_ratio
- dirty_bytes
- dirty_expire_centisecs
- dirty_ratio
- dirty_writeback_centisecs
- drop_caches
- extfrag_threshold
- hugepages_treat_as_movable
- hugetlb_shm_group
- laptop_mode
- legacy_va_layout
- lowmem_reserve_ratio
- max_map_count
HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7 Add the high level memory handler that poisons pages that got corrupted by hardware (typically by a two bit flip in a DIMM or a cache) on the Linux level. The goal is to prevent everyone from accessing these pages in the future. This done at the VM level by marking a page hwpoisoned and doing the appropriate action based on the type of page it is. The code that does this is portable and lives in mm/memory-failure.c To quote the overview comment: High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache failure. This focuses on pages detected as corrupted in the background. When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead when that happens another machine check will happen. Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere, possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the error handling takes potentially a long time. Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected to be rare we hope we can get away with this. There are in principle two strategies to kill processes on poison: - just unmap the data and wait for an actual reference before killing - kill as soon as corruption is detected. Both have advantages and disadvantages and should be used in different situations. Right now both are implemented and can be switched with a new sysctl vm.memory_failure_early_kill The default is early kill. The patch does some rmap data structure walking on its own to collect processes to kill. This is unusual because normally all rmap data structure knowledge is in rmap.c only. I put it here for now to keep everything together and rmap knowledge has been seeping out anyways Includes contributions from Johannes Weiner, Chris Mason, Fengguang Wu, Nick Piggin (who did a lot of great work) and others. Cc: npiggin@suse.de Cc: riel@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
2009-09-16 09:50:15 +00:00
- memory_failure_early_kill
- memory_failure_recovery
- min_free_kbytes
[PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim Currently one can enable slab reclaim by setting an explicit option in /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. Slab reclaim is then used as a final option if the freeing of unmapped file backed pages is not enough to free enough pages to allow a local allocation. However, that means that the slab can grow excessively and that most memory of a node may be used by slabs. We have had a case where a machine with 46GB of memory was using 40-42GB for slab. Zone reclaim was effective in dealing with pagecache pages. However, slab reclaim was only done during global reclaim (which is a bit rare on NUMA systems). This patch implements slab reclaim during zone reclaim. Zone reclaim occurs if there is a danger of an off node allocation. At that point we 1. Shrink the per node page cache if the number of pagecache pages is more than min_unmapped_ratio percent of pages in a zone. 2. Shrink the slab cache if the number of the nodes reclaimable slab pages (patch depends on earlier one that implements that counter) are more than min_slab_ratio (a new /proc/sys/vm tunable). The shrinking of the slab cache is a bit problematic since it is not node specific. So we simply calculate what point in the slab we want to reach (current per node slab use minus the number of pages that neeed to be allocated) and then repeately run the global reclaim until that is unsuccessful or we have reached the limit. I hope we will have zone based slab reclaim at some point which will make that easier. The default for the min_slab_ratio is 5% Also remove the slab option from /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 06:31:52 +00:00
- min_slab_ratio
- min_unmapped_ratio
- mmap_min_addr
- nr_hugepages
- nr_overcommit_hugepages
- nr_trim_pages (only if CONFIG_MMU=n)
- numa_zonelist_order
- oom_dump_tasks
- oom_kill_allocating_task
- overcommit_memory
- overcommit_ratio
- page-cluster
- panic_on_oom
- percpu_pagelist_fraction
- stat_interval
- swappiness
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 22:08:10 +00:00
- user_reserve_kbytes
- vfs_cache_pressure
- zone_reclaim_mode
==============================================================
admin_reserve_kbytes
The amount of free memory in the system that should be reserved for users
with the capability cap_sys_admin.
admin_reserve_kbytes defaults to min(3% of free pages, 8MB)
That should provide enough for the admin to log in and kill a process,
if necessary, under the default overcommit 'guess' mode.
Systems running under overcommit 'never' should increase this to account
for the full Virtual Memory Size of programs used to recover. Otherwise,
root may not be able to log in to recover the system.
How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve?
sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.)
For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS).
On x86_64 this is about 8MB.
For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ)
and add the sum of their RSS.
On x86_64 this is about 128MB.
Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory.
==============================================================
block_dump
block_dump enables block I/O debugging when set to a nonzero value. More
information on block I/O debugging is in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
==============================================================
compact_memory
Available only when CONFIG_COMPACTION is set. When 1 is written to the file,
all zones are compacted such that free memory is available in contiguous
blocks where possible. This can be important for example in the allocation of
huge pages although processes will also directly compact memory as required.
==============================================================
dirty_background_bytes
Contains the amount of dirty memory at which the background kernel
flusher threads will start writeback.
Note: dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart of dirty_background_ratio. Only
one of them may be specified at a time. When one sysctl is written it is
immediately taken into account to evaluate the dirty memory limits and the
other appears as 0 when read.
==============================================================
dirty_background_ratio
Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
the background kernel flusher threads will start writing out dirty data.
==============================================================
dirty_bytes
Contains the amount of dirty memory at which a process generating disk writes
will itself start writeback.
Note: dirty_bytes is the counterpart of dirty_ratio. Only one of them may be
specified at a time. When one sysctl is written it is immediately taken into
account to evaluate the dirty memory limits and the other appears as 0 when
read.
mm: prevent divide error for small values of vm_dirty_bytes Avoid setting less than two pages for vm_dirty_bytes: this is necessary to avoid potential division by 0 (like the following) in get_dirty_limits(). [ 49.951610] divide error: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP [ 49.952195] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent [ 49.952195] CPU 1 [ 49.952195] Modules linked in: pcspkr [ 49.952195] Pid: 3064, comm: dd Not tainted 2.6.30-rc3 #1 [ 49.952195] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff802d39a9>] [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP: 0018:ffff88001de03a98 EFLAGS: 00010202 [ 49.952195] RAX: 00000000000000c0 RBX: ffff88001de03b80 RCX: 28f5c28f5c28f5c3 [ 49.952195] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000000000c0 RDI: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] RBP: ffff88001de03ae8 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] R10: ffff88001ddda9a0 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 0000000000000001 [ 49.952195] R13: ffff88001fbc8218 R14: ffff88001de03b70 R15: ffff88001de03b78 [ 49.952195] FS: 00007fe9a435b6f0(0000) GS:ffff8800025d9000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 49.952195] CR2: 00007fe9a39ab000 CR3: 000000001de38000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 [ 49.952195] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [ 49.952195] Process dd (pid: 3064, threadinfo ffff88001de02000, task ffff88001ddda250) [ 49.952195] Stack: [ 49.952195] ffff88001fa0de00 ffff88001f2dbd70 ffff88001f9fe800 000080b900000000 [ 49.952195] 00000000000000c0 ffff8800027a6100 0000000000000400 ffff88001fbc8218 [ 49.952195] 0000000000000000 0000000000000600 ffff88001de03bb8 ffffffff802d3ed7 [ 49.952195] Call Trace: [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802d3ed7>] balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr+0x1d7/0x3f0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80368f8e>] ? ext3_writeback_write_end+0x9e/0x120 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cc7df>] generic_file_buffered_write+0x12f/0x330 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cce8d>] __generic_file_aio_write_nolock+0x26d/0x460 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cda32>] ? generic_file_aio_write+0x52/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cda49>] generic_file_aio_write+0x69/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80365fa6>] ext3_file_write+0x26/0xc0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff803034d1>] do_sync_write+0xf1/0x140 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80290d1a>] ? get_lock_stats+0x2a/0x60 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80280730>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff8030411b>] vfs_write+0xcb/0x190 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff803042d0>] sys_write+0x50/0x90 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff8022ff6b>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b [ 49.952195] Code: 00 00 00 2b 05 09 1c 17 01 48 89 c6 49 0f af f4 48 c1 ee 02 48 89 f0 48 f7 e1 48 89 d6 31 d2 48 c1 ee 02 48 0f af 75 d0 48 89 f0 <48> f7 f7 41 8b 95 ac 01 00 00 48 89 c7 49 0f af d4 48 c1 ea 02 [ 49.952195] RIP [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP <ffff88001de03a98> [ 50.096523] ---[ end trace 008d7aa02f244d7b ]--- Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-30 22:08:57 +00:00
Note: the minimum value allowed for dirty_bytes is two pages (in bytes); any
value lower than this limit will be ignored and the old configuration will be
retained.
==============================================================
dirty_expire_centisecs
This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible
for writeout by the kernel flusher threads. It is expressed in 100'ths
of a second. Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this
interval will be written out next time a flusher thread wakes up.
==============================================================
dirty_ratio
Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
a process which is generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty
data.
==============================================================
dirty_writeback_centisecs
The kernel flusher threads will periodically wake up and write `old' data
out to disk. This tunable expresses the interval between those wakeups, in
100'ths of a second.
Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether.
==============================================================
drop_caches
Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and
inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free.
To free pagecache:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
To free dentries and inodes:
echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the
user should run `sync' first.
==============================================================
extfrag_threshold
This parameter affects whether the kernel will compact memory or direct
reclaim to satisfy a high-order allocation. /proc/extfrag_index shows what
the fragmentation index for each order is in each zone in the system. Values
tending towards 0 imply allocations would fail due to lack of memory,
values towards 1000 imply failures are due to fragmentation and -1 implies
that the allocation will succeed as long as watermarks are met.
The kernel will not compact memory in a zone if the
fragmentation index is <= extfrag_threshold. The default value is 500.
==============================================================
hugepages_treat_as_movable
This parameter is only useful when kernelcore= is specified at boot time to
create ZONE_MOVABLE for pages that may be reclaimed or migrated. Huge pages
are not movable so are not normally allocated from ZONE_MOVABLE. A non-zero
value written to hugepages_treat_as_movable allows huge pages to be allocated
from ZONE_MOVABLE.
Once enabled, the ZONE_MOVABLE is treated as an area of memory the huge
pages pool can easily grow or shrink within. Assuming that applications are
not running that mlock() a lot of memory, it is likely the huge pages pool
can grow to the size of ZONE_MOVABLE by repeatedly entering the desired value
into nr_hugepages and triggering page reclaim.
==============================================================
hugetlb_shm_group
hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV
shared memory segment using hugetlb page.
==============================================================
laptop_mode
laptop_mode is a knob that controls "laptop mode". All the things that are
controlled by this knob are discussed in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
==============================================================
legacy_va_layout
If non-zero, this sysctl disables the new 32-bit mmap layout - the kernel
will use the legacy (2.4) layout for all processes.
==============================================================
lowmem_reserve_ratio
For some specialised workloads on highmem machines it is dangerous for
the kernel to allow process memory to be allocated from the "lowmem"
zone. This is because that memory could then be pinned via the mlock()
system call, or by unavailability of swapspace.
And on large highmem machines this lack of reclaimable lowmem memory
can be fatal.
So the Linux page allocator has a mechanism which prevents allocations
which _could_ use highmem from using too much lowmem. This means that
a certain amount of lowmem is defended from the possibility of being
captured into pinned user memory.
(The same argument applies to the old 16 megabyte ISA DMA region. This
mechanism will also defend that region from allocations which could use
highmem or lowmem).
The `lowmem_reserve_ratio' tunable determines how aggressive the kernel is
in defending these lower zones.
If you have a machine which uses highmem or ISA DMA and your
applications are using mlock(), or if you are running with no swap then
you probably should change the lowmem_reserve_ratio setting.
The lowmem_reserve_ratio is an array. You can see them by reading this file.
-
% cat /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_reserve_ratio
256 256 32
-
Note: # of this elements is one fewer than number of zones. Because the highest
zone's value is not necessary for following calculation.
But, these values are not used directly. The kernel calculates # of protection
pages for each zones from them. These are shown as array of protection pages
in /proc/zoneinfo like followings. (This is an example of x86-64 box).
Each zone has an array of protection pages like this.
-
Node 0, zone DMA
pages free 1355
min 3
low 3
high 4
:
:
numa_other 0
protection: (0, 2004, 2004, 2004)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
pagesets
cpu: 0 pcp: 0
:
-
These protections are added to score to judge whether this zone should be used
for page allocation or should be reclaimed.
In this example, if normal pages (index=2) are required to this DMA zone and
watermark[WMARK_HIGH] is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should
not be used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
(4 + 2004 = 2008). If this protection value is 0, this zone would be used for
normal page requirement. If requirement is DMA zone(index=0), protection[0]
(=0) is used.
zone[i]'s protection[j] is calculated by following expression.
(i < j):
zone[i]->protection[j]
= (total sums of present_pages from zone[i+1] to zone[j] on the node)
/ lowmem_reserve_ratio[i];
(i = j):
(should not be protected. = 0;
(i > j):
(not necessary, but looks 0)
The default values of lowmem_reserve_ratio[i] are
256 (if zone[i] means DMA or DMA32 zone)
32 (others).
As above expression, they are reciprocal number of ratio.
256 means 1/256. # of protection pages becomes about "0.39%" of total present
pages of higher zones on the node.
If you would like to protect more pages, smaller values are effective.
The minimum value is 1 (1/1 -> 100%).
==============================================================
max_map_count:
This file contains the maximum number of memory map areas a process
may have. Memory map areas are used as a side-effect of calling
malloc, directly by mmap and mprotect, and also when loading shared
libraries.
While most applications need less than a thousand maps, certain
programs, particularly malloc debuggers, may consume lots of them,
e.g., up to one or two maps per allocation.
The default value is 65536.
HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7 Add the high level memory handler that poisons pages that got corrupted by hardware (typically by a two bit flip in a DIMM or a cache) on the Linux level. The goal is to prevent everyone from accessing these pages in the future. This done at the VM level by marking a page hwpoisoned and doing the appropriate action based on the type of page it is. The code that does this is portable and lives in mm/memory-failure.c To quote the overview comment: High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache failure. This focuses on pages detected as corrupted in the background. When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead when that happens another machine check will happen. Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere, possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the error handling takes potentially a long time. Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected to be rare we hope we can get away with this. There are in principle two strategies to kill processes on poison: - just unmap the data and wait for an actual reference before killing - kill as soon as corruption is detected. Both have advantages and disadvantages and should be used in different situations. Right now both are implemented and can be switched with a new sysctl vm.memory_failure_early_kill The default is early kill. The patch does some rmap data structure walking on its own to collect processes to kill. This is unusual because normally all rmap data structure knowledge is in rmap.c only. I put it here for now to keep everything together and rmap knowledge has been seeping out anyways Includes contributions from Johannes Weiner, Chris Mason, Fengguang Wu, Nick Piggin (who did a lot of great work) and others. Cc: npiggin@suse.de Cc: riel@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
2009-09-16 09:50:15 +00:00
=============================================================
memory_failure_early_kill:
Control how to kill processes when uncorrected memory error (typically
a 2bit error in a memory module) is detected in the background by hardware
that cannot be handled by the kernel. In some cases (like the page
still having a valid copy on disk) the kernel will handle the failure
transparently without affecting any applications. But if there is
no other uptodate copy of the data it will kill to prevent any data
corruptions from propagating.
1: Kill all processes that have the corrupted and not reloadable page mapped
as soon as the corruption is detected. Note this is not supported
for a few types of pages, like kernel internally allocated data or
the swap cache, but works for the majority of user pages.
0: Only unmap the corrupted page from all processes and only kill a process
who tries to access it.
The kill is done using a catchable SIGBUS with BUS_MCEERR_AO, so processes can
handle this if they want to.
This is only active on architectures/platforms with advanced machine
check handling and depends on the hardware capabilities.
Applications can override this setting individually with the PR_MCE_KILL prctl
==============================================================
memory_failure_recovery
Enable memory failure recovery (when supported by the platform)
1: Attempt recovery.
0: Always panic on a memory failure.
==============================================================
min_free_kbytes:
This is used to force the Linux VM to keep a minimum number
of kilobytes free. The VM uses this number to compute a
watermark[WMARK_MIN] value for each lowmem zone in the system.
Each lowmem zone gets a number of reserved free pages based
proportionally on its size.
Some minimal amount of memory is needed to satisfy PF_MEMALLOC
allocations; if you set this to lower than 1024KB, your system will
become subtly broken, and prone to deadlock under high loads.
Setting this too high will OOM your machine instantly.
=============================================================
[PATCH] zone_reclaim: dynamic slab reclaim Currently one can enable slab reclaim by setting an explicit option in /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. Slab reclaim is then used as a final option if the freeing of unmapped file backed pages is not enough to free enough pages to allow a local allocation. However, that means that the slab can grow excessively and that most memory of a node may be used by slabs. We have had a case where a machine with 46GB of memory was using 40-42GB for slab. Zone reclaim was effective in dealing with pagecache pages. However, slab reclaim was only done during global reclaim (which is a bit rare on NUMA systems). This patch implements slab reclaim during zone reclaim. Zone reclaim occurs if there is a danger of an off node allocation. At that point we 1. Shrink the per node page cache if the number of pagecache pages is more than min_unmapped_ratio percent of pages in a zone. 2. Shrink the slab cache if the number of the nodes reclaimable slab pages (patch depends on earlier one that implements that counter) are more than min_slab_ratio (a new /proc/sys/vm tunable). The shrinking of the slab cache is a bit problematic since it is not node specific. So we simply calculate what point in the slab we want to reach (current per node slab use minus the number of pages that neeed to be allocated) and then repeately run the global reclaim until that is unsuccessful or we have reached the limit. I hope we will have zone based slab reclaim at some point which will make that easier. The default for the min_slab_ratio is 5% Also remove the slab option from /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-09-26 06:31:52 +00:00
min_slab_ratio:
This is available only on NUMA kernels.
A percentage of the total pages in each zone. On Zone reclaim
(fallback from the local zone occurs) slabs will be reclaimed if more
than this percentage of pages in a zone are reclaimable slab pages.
This insures that the slab growth stays under control even in NUMA
systems that rarely perform global reclaim.
The default is 5 percent.
Note that slab reclaim is triggered in a per zone / node fashion.
The process of reclaiming slab memory is currently not node specific
and may not be fast.
=============================================================
min_unmapped_ratio:
This is available only on NUMA kernels.
vmscan: properly account for the number of page cache pages zone_reclaim() can reclaim A bug was brought to my attention against a distro kernel but it affects mainline and I believe problems like this have been reported in various guises on the mailing lists although I don't have specific examples at the moment. The reported problem was that malloc() stalled for a long time (minutes in some cases) if a large tmpfs mount was occupying a large percentage of memory overall. The pages did not get cleaned or reclaimed by zone_reclaim() because the zone_reclaim_mode was unsuitable, but the lists are uselessly scanned frequencly making the CPU spin at near 100%. This patchset intends to address that bug and bring the behaviour of zone_reclaim() more in line with expectations which were noticed during investigation. It is based on top of mmotm and takes advantage of Kosaki's work with respect to zone_reclaim(). Patch 1 fixes the heuristics that zone_reclaim() uses to determine if the scan should go ahead. The broken heuristic is what was causing the malloc() stall as it uselessly scanned the LRU constantly. Currently, zone_reclaim is assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 and historically it could not deal with tmpfs pages at all. This fixes up the heuristic so that an unnecessary scan is more likely to be correctly avoided. Patch 2 notes that zone_reclaim() returning a failure automatically means the zone is marked full. This is not always true. It could have failed because the GFP mask or zone_reclaim_mode were unsuitable. Patch 3 introduces a counter zreclaim_failed that will increment each time the zone_reclaim scan-avoidance heuristics fail. If that counter is rapidly increasing, then zone_reclaim_mode should be set to 0 as a temporarily resolution and a bug reported because the scan-avoidance heuristic is still broken. This patch: 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. The lack of proper detection can manfiest as high CPU usage as the LRU list is scanned uselessly. 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. [kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: Estimate unmapped pages minus tmpfs pages] [fengguang.wu@intel.com: Fix underflow problem in Kosaki's estimate] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-06-16 22:33:20 +00:00
This is a percentage of the total pages in each zone. Zone reclaim will
only occur if more than this percentage of pages are in a state that
zone_reclaim_mode allows to be reclaimed.
If zone_reclaim_mode has the value 4 OR'd, then the percentage is compared
against all file-backed unmapped pages including swapcache pages and tmpfs
files. Otherwise, only unmapped pages backed by normal files but not tmpfs
files and similar are considered.
The default is 1 percent.
==============================================================
mmap_min_addr
This file indicates the amount of address space which a user process will
be restricted from mmapping. Since kernel null dereference bugs could
accidentally operate based on the information in the first couple of pages
of memory userspace processes should not be allowed to write to them. By
default this value is set to 0 and no protections will be enforced by the
security module. Setting this value to something like 64k will allow the
vast majority of applications to work correctly and provide defense in depth
against future potential kernel bugs.
==============================================================
nr_hugepages
Change the minimum size of the hugepage pool.
See Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt
==============================================================
nr_overcommit_hugepages
Change the maximum size of the hugepage pool. The maximum is
nr_hugepages + nr_overcommit_hugepages.
See Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt
==============================================================
nr_trim_pages
This is available only on NOMMU kernels.
This value adjusts the excess page trimming behaviour of power-of-2 aligned
NOMMU mmap allocations.
A value of 0 disables trimming of allocations entirely, while a value of 1
trims excess pages aggressively. Any value >= 1 acts as the watermark where
trimming of allocations is initiated.
The default value is 1.
See Documentation/nommu-mmap.txt for more information.
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16 06:38:01 +00:00
==============================================================
numa_zonelist_order
This sysctl is only for NUMA.
'where the memory is allocated from' is controlled by zonelists.
(This documentation ignores ZONE_HIGHMEM/ZONE_DMA32 for simple explanation.
you may be able to read ZONE_DMA as ZONE_DMA32...)
In non-NUMA case, a zonelist for GFP_KERNEL is ordered as following.
ZONE_NORMAL -> ZONE_DMA
This means that a memory allocation request for GFP_KERNEL will
get memory from ZONE_DMA only when ZONE_NORMAL is not available.
In NUMA case, you can think of following 2 types of order.
Assume 2 node NUMA and below is zonelist of Node(0)'s GFP_KERNEL
(A) Node(0) ZONE_NORMAL -> Node(0) ZONE_DMA -> Node(1) ZONE_NORMAL
(B) Node(0) ZONE_NORMAL -> Node(1) ZONE_NORMAL -> Node(0) ZONE_DMA.
Type(A) offers the best locality for processes on Node(0), but ZONE_DMA
will be used before ZONE_NORMAL exhaustion. This increases possibility of
out-of-memory(OOM) of ZONE_DMA because ZONE_DMA is tend to be small.
Type(B) cannot offer the best locality but is more robust against OOM of
the DMA zone.
Type(A) is called as "Node" order. Type (B) is "Zone" order.
"Node order" orders the zonelists by node, then by zone within each node.
Specify "[Nn]ode" for node order
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16 06:38:01 +00:00
"Zone Order" orders the zonelists by zone type, then by node within each
zone. Specify "[Zz]one" for zone order.
change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16 06:38:01 +00:00
Specify "[Dd]efault" to request automatic configuration. Autoconfiguration
will select "node" order in following case.
(1) if the DMA zone does not exist or
(2) if the DMA zone comprises greater than 50% of the available memory or
(3) if any node's DMA zone comprises greater than 60% of its local memory and
the amount of local memory is big enough.
Otherwise, "zone" order will be selected. Default order is recommended unless
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.
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
the memory state information for each one. Such systems should not
be forced to incur a performance penalty in OOM conditions when the
information may not be desired.
If this is set to non-zero, this information is shown whenever the
OOM killer actually kills a memory-hogging task.
The default value is 1 (enabled).
==============================================================
oom_kill_allocating_task
This enables or disables killing the OOM-triggering task in
out-of-memory situations.
If this is set to zero, the OOM killer will scan through the entire
tasklist and select a task based on heuristics to kill. This normally
selects a rogue memory-hogging task that frees up a large amount of
memory when killed.
If this is set to non-zero, the OOM killer simply kills the task that
triggered the out-of-memory condition. This avoids the expensive
tasklist scan.
If panic_on_oom is selected, it takes precedence over whatever value
is used in oom_kill_allocating_task.
The default value is 0.
==============================================================
overcommit_memory:
This value contains a flag that enables memory overcommitment.
When this flag is 0, the kernel attempts to estimate the amount
of free memory left when userspace requests more memory.
When this flag is 1, the kernel pretends there is always enough
memory until it actually runs out.
When this flag is 2, the kernel uses a "never overcommit"
policy that attempts to prevent any overcommit of memory.
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 22:08:10 +00:00
Note that user_reserve_kbytes affects this policy.
This feature can be very useful because there are a lot of
programs that malloc() huge amounts of memory "just-in-case"
and don't use much of it.
The default value is 0.
See Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting and
security/commoncap.c::cap_vm_enough_memory() for more information.
==============================================================
overcommit_ratio:
When overcommit_memory is set to 2, the committed address
space is not permitted to exceed swap plus this percentage
of physical RAM. See above.
==============================================================
page-cluster
page-cluster controls the number of pages up to which consecutive pages
are read in from swap in a single attempt. This is the swap counterpart
to page cache readahead.
The mentioned consecutivity is not in terms of virtual/physical addresses,
but consecutive on swap space - that means they were swapped out together.
It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
Zero disables swap readahead completely.
The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some
small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
swap-intensive.
Lower values mean lower latencies for initial faults, but at the same time
extra faults and I/O delays for following faults if they would have been part of
that consecutive pages readahead would have brought in.
=============================================================
panic_on_oom
This enables or disables panic on out-of-memory feature.
If this is set to 0, the kernel will kill some rogue process,
called oom_killer. Usually, oom_killer can kill rogue processes and
system will survive.
If this is set to 1, the kernel panics when out-of-memory happens.
However, if a process limits using nodes by mempolicy/cpusets,
and those nodes become memory exhaustion status, one process
may be killed by oom-killer. No panic occurs in this case.
Because other nodes' memory may be free. This means system total status
may be not fatal yet.
If this is set to 2, the kernel panics compulsorily even on the
above-mentioned. Even oom happens under memory cgroup, the whole
system panics.
The default value is 0.
1 and 2 are for failover of clustering. Please select either
according to your policy of failover.
panic_on_oom=2+kdump gives you very strong tool to investigate
why oom happens. You can get snapshot.
=============================================================
percpu_pagelist_fraction
This is the fraction of pages at most (high mark pcp->high) in each zone that
are allocated for each per cpu page list. The min value for this is 8. It
means that we don't allow more than 1/8th of pages in each zone to be
allocated in any single per_cpu_pagelist. This entry only changes the value
of hot per cpu pagelists. User can specify a number like 100 to allocate
1/100th of each zone to each per cpu page list.
The batch value of each per cpu pagelist is also updated as a result. It is
set to pcp->high/4. The upper limit of batch is (PAGE_SHIFT * 8)
The initial value is zero. Kernel does not use this value at boot time to set
the high water marks for each per cpu page list.
==============================================================
stat_interval
The time interval between which vm statistics are updated. The default
is 1 second.
==============================================================
swappiness
This control is used to define how aggressive the kernel will swap
memory pages. Higher values will increase agressiveness, lower values
decrease the amount of swap.
The default value is 60.
==============================================================
mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve Add user_reserve_kbytes knob. Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages). Only about 8MB is necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are required even when overcommit is disabled. user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB) I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ... then adding the RSS of each. This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode. Background 1. user reserve __vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for other applications when overcommit is disabled. This was done so that a user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process. Without the reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory 2. admin reserve Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes. This was intended to prevent a scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations. Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve. Motivation The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current memory sizes. Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much. When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered "enterprise". Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process. I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a specific type of application load: * single application system * one or few processes (e.g. one per core) * allocating all available memory * not initializing every page immediately * long running I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load. A long running job sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation. They weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode. These clusters run diskless and have no swap. However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for example, almost 2GB out of 32GB. The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with one process per core. I have repeatedly seen a set of processes requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate. For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core. And it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks. Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory. Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Risks * "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if they already have a shell prompt. Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3% reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible. * root-cant-log-in problem The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small. They can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in. However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory. Alternatives * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory. Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead. * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves. The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise. * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc. Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc. Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well. The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low overhead compared to cgroups. The patches preserve current behavior where 3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't shrink to an unusable size under pressure. The code allows admins to tune for embedded and enterprise usage. FAQ * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed? What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0? Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting admin_reserve_kbytes too low. On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is: 8MB for overcommit 'guess' 128MB for overcommit 'never' admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB) So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust admin_reserve_pages. * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve? A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum: sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.) For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS) because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB. For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ) and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations-- even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for. On x86_64 this is about 128MB. When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode. When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each was safest in my testing. * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0? Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode. Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus admin_reserve_kbytes. However, they will easily see a message such as: "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" And they won't be able to recover/kill their application. The admin should be able to recover the system if admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately. * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'? "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root. "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional applications. * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words, these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable? Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It does not take into account the memory that other applications have malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system. Test Summary There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess' mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected. Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never' mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated to a user application. Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed. This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer. Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the admin can. With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode and without swap can be configured to: 1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of recoverability 2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to ensure that a user cannot take down a system Test Description Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services turned off. Caches were dropped before each test. Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory as reported by /proc/meminfo In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100 Test Results 3.9.0-rc1-mm1 Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5432/5432 no yes yes guess yes 4 5444/5444 1 yes yes guess no 1 5302/5449 no yes yes guess no 4 - crash no no never yes 1 5460/5460 1 yes yes never yes 4 5460/5460 1 yes yes never no 1 5218/5432 no no yes never no 4 5203/5448 no no yes 3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable. Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery ---------- ---- ---- ------------- ---- ------------- -------------- guess yes 1 5419/5419 no - yes 8MB yes guess yes 4 5436/5436 1 - yes 8MB yes guess no 1 5440/5440 * - yes 8MB yes guess no 4 - crash - no 8MB no * process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it never yes 1 5446/5446 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never yes 4 5456/5456 no 10MB yes 20MB yes never no 1 5387/5429 no 128MB no 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 226MB barely 8MB barely never no 1 5359/5448 no 10MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5323/5428 no 0MB no 10MB barely never no 1 5332/5428 no 0MB no 50MB yes never no 1 5293/5429 no 0MB no 90MB yes never no 1 5001/5427 no 230MB yes 338MB yes never no 4* 4998/5424 no 230MB yes 338MB yes * more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB Future Work - Test larger memory systems. - Test an embedded image. - Test other architectures. - Time malloc microbenchmarks. - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for each memory cgroup? - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars. Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb? Other places in the kernel do this. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static] Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker <agshew@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2013-04-29 22:08:10 +00:00
- user_reserve_kbytes
When overcommit_memory is set to 2, "never overommit" mode, reserve
min(3% of current process size, user_reserve_kbytes) of free memory.
This is intended to prevent a user from starting a single memory hogging
process, such that they cannot recover (kill the hog).
user_reserve_kbytes defaults to min(3% of the current process size, 128MB).
If this is reduced to zero, then the user will be allowed to allocate
all free memory with a single process, minus admin_reserve_kbytes.
Any subsequent attempts to execute a command will result in
"fork: Cannot allocate memory".
Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory.
==============================================================
vfs_cache_pressure
------------------
Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for
caching of directory and inode objects.
At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to
reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and
swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer
to retain dentry and inode caches. When vfs_cache_pressure=0, the kernel will
never reclaim dentries and inodes due to memory pressure and this can easily
lead to out-of-memory conditions. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100
causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes.
==============================================================
zone_reclaim_mode:
Zone_reclaim_mode allows someone to set more or less aggressive approaches to
reclaim memory when a zone runs out of memory. If it is set to zero then no
zone reclaim occurs. Allocations will be satisfied from other zones / nodes
in the system.
This is value ORed together of
1 = Zone reclaim on
2 = Zone reclaim writes dirty pages out
4 = Zone reclaim swaps pages
zone_reclaim_mode is set during bootup to 1 if it is determined that pages
from remote zones will cause a measurable performance reduction. The
page allocator will then reclaim easily reusable pages (those page
cache pages that are currently not used) before allocating off node pages.
It may be beneficial to switch off zone reclaim if the system is
used for a file server and all of memory should be used for caching files
from disk. In that case the caching effect is more important than
data locality.
Allowing zone reclaim to write out pages stops processes that are
writing large amounts of data from dirtying pages on other nodes. Zone
reclaim will write out dirty pages if a zone fills up and so effectively
throttle the process. This may decrease the performance of a single process
since it cannot use all of system memory to buffer the outgoing writes
anymore but it preserve the memory on other nodes so that the performance
of other processes running on other nodes will not be affected.
Allowing regular swap effectively restricts allocations to the local
node unless explicitly overridden by memory policies or cpuset
configurations.
============ End of Document =================================