Re: [PATCH 01/10] mm: vmscan: Limit the number of pages kswapd reclaimsat each priority

From: Ric Mason
Date: Fri Apr 12 2013 - 01:46:39 EST


Ping Rik, I also want to know the answer. ;-)
On 04/11/2013 01:58 PM, Will Huck wrote:
Hi Rik,
On 03/22/2013 11:52 AM, Rik van Riel wrote:
On 03/21/2013 08:05 PM, Will Huck wrote:

One offline question, how to understand this in function balance_pgdat:
/*
* Do some background aging of the anon list, to give
* pages a chance to be referenced before reclaiming.
*/
age_acitve_anon(zone, &sc);

The anon lrus use a two-handed clock algorithm. New anonymous pages
start off on the active anon list. Older anonymous pages get moved
to the inactive anon list.

The downside of page cache use-once replacement algorithm is inter-reference distance, corret? Does it have any other downside? What's the downside of two-handed clock algorithm against anonymous pages?


If they get referenced before they reach the end of the inactive anon
list, they get moved back to the active list.

If we need to swap something out and find a non-referenced page at the
end of the inactive anon list, we will swap it out.

In order to make good pageout decisions, pages need to stay on the
inactive anon list for a longer time, so they have plenty of time to
get referenced, before the reclaim code looks at them.

To achieve that, we will move some active anon pages to the inactive
anon list even when we do not want to swap anything out - as long as
the inactive anon list is below its target size.

Does that make sense?


--
To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in
the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM,
see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ .
Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/