Re: [patch 3/7] mm: vmscan: clarify how swappiness, highestpriority, memcg interact

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Tue Dec 18 2012 - 05:04:41 EST


On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 01:12:33PM -0500, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> A swappiness of 0 has a slightly different meaning for global reclaim
> (may swap if file cache really low) and memory cgroup reclaim (never
> swap, ever).
>
> In addition, global reclaim at highest priority will scan all LRU
> lists equal to their size and ignore other balancing heuristics.
> UNLESS swappiness forbids swapping, then the lists are balanced based
> on recent reclaim effectiveness. UNLESS file cache is running low,
> then anonymous pages are force-scanned.
>
> This (total mess of a) behaviour is implicit and not obvious from the
> way the code is organized. At least make it apparent in the code flow
> and document the conditions. It will be it easier to come up with
> sane semantics later.
>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>

--
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs
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