Re: [RFC] restore user defined min_free_kbytes when disabling thp

From: Han Pingtian
Date: Wed Jan 22 2014 - 01:05:23 EST


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 10:23:51AM +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 05:38:59PM +0800, Han Pingtian wrote:
> > The testcase 'thp04' of LTP will enable THP, do some testing, then
> > disable it if it wasn't enabled. But this will leave a different value
> > of min_free_kbytes if it has been set by admin. So I think it's better
> > to restore the user defined value after disabling THP.
> >
>
> Then have LTP record what min_free_kbytes was at the same time THP was
> enabled by the test and restore both settings. It leaves a window where
> an admin can set an alternative value during the test but that would also
> invalidate the test in same cases and gets filed under "don't do that".
>

Because the value is changed in kernel, so it would be better to
restore it in kernel, right? :) I have a v2 patch which will restore
the value only if it isn't set again by user after THP's initialization.
This v2 patch is dependent on the patch 'mm: show message when updating
min_free_kbytes in thp' which has been added to -mm tree, can be found
here:

http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/mm-show-message-when-updating-min_free_kbytes-in-thp.patch

please have a look. Thanks.