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Commit e3e529bf authored by Andrew Morton's avatar Andrew Morton Committed by Linus Torvalds
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[PATCH] writeback tunables 

Adds five sysctls for tuning the writeback behaviour:

	dirty_async_ratio
	dirty_background_ratio
	dirty_sync_ratio
	dirty_expire_centisecs
	dirty_writeback_centisecs

these are described in Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt  They are
basically the tradiditional knobs which we've always had...

We are accreting a ton of obsolete sysctl numbers under /proc/sys/vm/.
I didn't recycle these - just mark them unused and remove the obsolete
documentation.
parent 88bccfb7
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Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
View file @ e3e529bf
......@@ -948,120 +948,43 @@ program to load modules on demand.
-----------------------------------------------
The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation of the virtual
memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel. In addition, one of the files
(bdflush) has some influence on disk usage.
memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel.
bdflush
-------
This file controls the operation of the bdflush kernel daemon. It currently
contains nine integer values, six of which are actually used by the kernel.
They are listed in table 2-2.
Table 2-2: Parameters in /proc/sys/vm/bdflush
..............................................................................
Value Meaning
nfract Percentage of buffer cache dirty to activate bdflush
ndirty Maximum number of dirty blocks to write out per wake-cycle
nrefill Number of clean buffers to try to obtain each time we call refill
nref_dirt buffer threshold for activating bdflush when trying to refill
buffers.
dummy Unused
age_buffer Time for normal buffer to age before we flush it
age_super Time for superblock to age before we flush it
dummy Unused
dummy Unused
..............................................................................
nfract
------
This parameter governs the maximum number of dirty buffers in the buffer
cache. Dirty means that the contents of the buffer still have to be written to
disk (as opposed to a clean buffer, which can just be forgotten about).
Setting this to a higher value means that Linux can delay disk writes for a
long time, but it also means that it will have to do a lot of I/O at once when
memory becomes short. A lower value will spread out disk I/O more evenly.
ndirty
------
Ndirty gives the maximum number of dirty buffers that bdflush can write to the
disk at one time. A high value will mean delayed, bursty I/O, while a small
value can lead to memory shortage when bdflush isn't woken up often enough.
nrefill
-------
This is the number of buffers that bdflush will add to the list of free
buffers when refill_freelist() is called. It is necessary to allocate free
buffers beforehand, since the buffers are often different sizes than the
memory pages and some bookkeeping needs to be done beforehand. The higher the
number, the more memory will be wasted and the less often refill_freelist()
will need to run.
nref_dirt
---------
When refill_freelist() comes across more than nref_dirt dirty buffers, it will
wake up bdflush.
age_buffer and age_super
------------------------
Finally, the age_buffer and age_super parameters govern the maximum time Linux
waits before writing out a dirty buffer to disk. The value is expressed in
jiffies (clockticks), the number of jiffies per second is 100. Age_buffer is
the maximum age for data blocks, while age_super is for filesystems meta data.
buffermem
---------
The three values in this file control how much memory should be used for
buffer memory. The percentage is calculated as a percentage of total system
memory.
The values are:
min_percent
-----------
dirty_background_ratio
----------------------
This is the minimum percentage of memory that should be spent on buffer
memory.
Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
the pdflush background writeback daemon will start writing out dirty data.
borrow_percent
--------------
dirty_async_ratio
-----------------
When Linux is short on memory, and the buffer cache uses more than it has been
allotted, the memory management (MM) subsystem will prune the buffer cache
more heavily than other memory to compensate.
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.
max_percent
-----------
dirty_sync_ratio
----------------
This is the maximum amount of memory that can be used for buffer memory.
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 and waiting upon completion of that writeout.
freepages
---------
dirty_writeback_centisecs
-------------------------
This file contains three values: min, low and high:
The pdflush writeback daemons 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.
min
---
When the number of free pages in the system reaches this number, only the
kernel can allocate more memory.
dirty_expire_centisecs
----------------------
low
---
If the number of free pages falls below this point, the kernel starts swapping
aggressively.
This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible
for writeout by the pdflush daemons. 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 pdflush daemon wakes up.
high
----
The kernel tries to keep up to this amount of memory free; if memory falls
below this point, the kernel starts gently swapping in the hopes that it never
has to do really aggressive swapping.
kswapd
------
......@@ -1113,79 +1036,6 @@ On the other hand, enabling this feature can cause you to run out of memory
and thrash the system to death, so large and/or important servers will want to
set this value to 0.
pagecache
---------
This file does exactly the same job as buffermem, only this file controls the
amount of memory allowed for memory mapping and generic caching of files.
You don't want the minimum level to be too low, otherwise your system might
thrash when memory is tight or fragmentation is high.
pagetable_cache
---------------
The kernel keeps a number of page tables in a per-processor cache (this helps
a lot on SMP systems). The cache size for each processor will be between the
low and the high value.
On a low-memory, single CPU system, you can safely set these values to 0 so
you don't waste memory. It is used on SMP systems so that the system can
perform fast pagetable allocations without having to acquire the kernel memory
lock.
For large systems, the settings are probably fine. For normal systems they
won't hurt a bit. For small systems ( less than 16MB ram) it might be
advantageous to set both values to 0.
swapctl
-------
This file contains no less than 8 variables. All of these values are used by
kswapd.
The first four variables
* sc_max_page_age,
* sc_page_advance,
* sc_page_decline and
* sc_page_initial_age
are used to keep track of Linux's page aging. Page aging is a bookkeeping
method to track which pages of memory are often used, and which pages can be
swapped out without consequences.
When a page is swapped in, it starts at sc_page_initial_age (default 3) and
when the page is scanned by kswapd, its age is adjusted according to the
following scheme:
* If the page was used since the last time we scanned, its age is increased
by sc_page_advance (default 3). Where the maximum value is given by
sc_max_page_age (default 20).
* Otherwise (meaning it wasn't used) its age is decreased by sc_page_decline
(default 1).
When a page reaches age 0, it's ready to be swapped out.
The variables sc_age_cluster_fract, sc_age_cluster_min, sc_pageout_weight and
sc_bufferout_weight, can be used to control kswapd's aggressiveness in
swapping out pages.
Sc_age_cluster_fract is used to calculate how many pages from a process are to
be scanned by kswapd. The formula used is
(sc_age_cluster_fract divided by 1024) times resident set size
So if you want kswapd to scan the whole process, sc_age_cluster_fract needs to
have a value of 1024. The minimum number of pages kswapd will scan is
represented by sc_age_cluster_min, which is done so that kswapd will also scan
small processes.
The values of sc_pageout_weight and sc_bufferout_weight are used to control
how many tries kswapd will make in order to swap out one page/buffer. These
values can be used to fine-tune the ratio between user pages and buffer/cache
memory. When you find that your Linux system is swapping out too many process
pages in order to satisfy buffer memory demands, you may want to either
increase sc_bufferout_weight, or decrease the value of sc_pageout_weight.
2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
----------------------------------------------
......
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
View file @ e3e529bf
......@@ -9,116 +9,28 @@ This file contains the documentation for the sysctl files in
/proc/sys/vm and is valid for Linux kernel version 2.2.
The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation
of the virtual memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel, and
one of the files (bdflush) also has a little influence on disk
usage.
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:
- bdflush
- buffermem
- freepages
- kswapd
- overcommit_memory
- page-cluster
- pagecache
- pagetable_cache
- dirty_async_ratio
- dirty_background_ratio
- dirty_expire_centisecs
- dirty_sync_ratio
- dirty_writeback_centisecs
==============================================================
bdflush:
This file controls the operation of the bdflush kernel
daemon. The source code to this struct can be found in
linux/fs/buffer.c. It currently contains 9 integer values,
of which 4 are actually used by the kernel.
From linux/fs/buffer.c:
--------------------------------------------------------------
union bdflush_param {
struct {
int nfract; /* Percentage of buffer cache dirty to
activate bdflush */
int dummy1; /* old "ndirty" */
int dummy2; /* old "nrefill" */
int dummy3; /* unused */
int interval; /* jiffies delay between kupdate flushes */
int age_buffer; /* Time for normal buffer to age */
int nfract_sync;/* Percentage of buffer cache dirty to
activate bdflush synchronously */
int dummy4; /* unused */
int dummy5; /* unused */
} b_un;
unsigned int data[N_PARAM];
} bdf_prm = {{30, 64, 64, 256, 5*HZ, 30*HZ, 60, 0, 0}};
--------------------------------------------------------------
int nfract:
The first parameter governs the maximum number of dirty
buffers in the buffer cache. Dirty means that the contents
of the buffer still have to be written to disk (as opposed
to a clean buffer, which can just be forgotten about).
Setting this to a high value means that Linux can delay disk
writes for a long time, but it also means that it will have
to do a lot of I/O at once when memory becomes short. A low
value will spread out disk I/O more evenly, at the cost of
more frequent I/O operations. The default value is 30%,
the minimum is 0%, and the maximum is 100%.
int interval:
The fifth parameter, interval, is the minimum rate at
which kupdate will wake and flush. The value is expressed in
jiffies (clockticks), the number of jiffies per second is
normally 100 (Alpha is 1024). Thus, x*HZ is x seconds. The
default value is 5 seconds, the minimum is 0 seconds, and the
maximum is 600 seconds.
int age_buffer:
The sixth parameter, age_buffer, governs the maximum time
Linux waits before writing out a dirty buffer to disk. The
value is in jiffies. The default value is 30 seconds,
the minimum is 1 second, and the maximum 6,000 seconds.
int nfract_sync:
The seventh parameter, nfract_sync, governs the percentage
of buffer cache that is dirty before bdflush activates
synchronously. This can be viewed as the hard limit before
bdflush forces buffers to disk. The default is 60%, the
minimum is 0%, and the maximum is 100%.
dirty_async_ratio, dirty_background_ratio, dirty_expire_centisecs,
dirty_sync_ratio dirty_writeback_centisecs:
==============================================================
buffermem:
The three values in this file correspond to the values in
the struct buffer_mem. It controls how much memory should
be used for buffer memory. The percentage is calculated
as a percentage of total system memory.
The values are:
min_percent -- this is the minimum percentage of memory
that should be spent on buffer memory
borrow_percent -- UNUSED
max_percent -- UNUSED
==============================================================
freepages:
This file contains the values in the struct freepages. That
struct contains three members: min, low and high.
The meaning of the numbers is:
freepages.min When the number of free pages in the system
reaches this number, only the kernel can
allocate more memory.
freepages.low If the number of free pages gets below this
point, the kernel starts swapping aggressively.
freepages.high The kernel tries to keep up to this amount of
memory free; if memory comes below this point,
the kernel gently starts swapping in the hopes
that it never has to do real aggressive swapping.
See Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
==============================================================
......@@ -180,38 +92,3 @@ The number of pages the kernel reads in at once is equal to
2 ^ page-cluster. Values above 2 ^ 5 don't make much sense
for swap because we only cluster swap data in 32-page groups.
==============================================================
pagecache:
This file does exactly the same as buffermem, only this
file controls the struct page_cache, and thus controls
the amount of memory used for the page cache.
In 2.2, the page cache is used for 3 main purposes:
- caching read() data from files
- caching mmap()ed data and executable files
- swap cache
When your system is both deep in swap and high on cache,
it probably means that a lot of the swapped data is being
cached, making for more efficient swapping than possible
with the 2.0 kernel.
==============================================================
pagetable_cache:
The kernel keeps a number of page tables in a per-processor
cache (this helps a lot on SMP systems). The cache size for
each processor will be between the low and the high value.
On a low-memory, single CPU system you can safely set these
values to 0 so you don't waste the memory. On SMP systems it
is used so that the system can do fast pagetable allocations
without having to acquire the kernel memory lock.
For large systems, the settings are probably OK. For normal
systems they won't hurt a bit. For small systems (<16MB ram)
it might be advantageous to set both values to 0.
include/linux/sysctl.h
View file @ e3e529bf
......@@ -130,16 +130,21 @@ enum
/* CTL_VM names: */
enum
{
VM_SWAPCTL=1, /* struct: Set vm swapping control */
VM_SWAPOUT=2, /* int: Linear or sqrt() swapout for hogs */
VM_FREEPG=3, /* struct: Set free page thresholds */
VM_UNUSED1=1, /* was: struct: Set vm swapping control */
VM_UNUSED2=2, /* was; int: Linear or sqrt() swapout for hogs */
VM_UNUSED3=3, /* was: struct: Set free page thresholds */
VM_BDFLUSH_UNUSED=4, /* Spare */
VM_OVERCOMMIT_MEMORY=5, /* Turn off the virtual memory safety limit */
VM_BUFFERMEM=6, /* struct: Set buffer memory thresholds */
VM_PAGECACHE=7, /* struct: Set cache memory thresholds */
VM_UNUSED4=6, /* was: struct: Set buffer memory thresholds */
VM_UNUSED5=7, /* was: struct: Set cache memory thresholds */
VM_PAGERDAEMON=8, /* struct: Control kswapd behaviour */
VM_PGT_CACHE=9, /* struct: Set page table cache parameters */
VM_PAGE_CLUSTER=10 /* int: set number of pages to swap together */
VM_UNUSED6=9, /* was: struct: Set page table cache parameters */
VM_PAGE_CLUSTER=10, /* int: set number of pages to swap together */
VM_DIRTY_BACKGROUND=11, /* dirty_background_ratio */
VM_DIRTY_ASYNC=12, /* dirty_async_ratio */
VM_DIRTY_SYNC=13, /* dirty_sync_ratio */
VM_DIRTY_WB_CS=14, /* dirty_writeback_centisecs */
VM_DIRTY_EXPIRE_CS=15, /* dirty_expire_centisecs */
};
......
include/linux/writeback.h
View file @ e3e529bf
......@@ -45,6 +45,12 @@ static inline void wait_on_inode(struct inode *inode)
/*
* mm/page-writeback.c
*/
extern int dirty_background_ratio;
extern int dirty_async_ratio;
extern int dirty_sync_ratio;
extern int dirty_writeback_centisecs;
extern int dirty_expire_centisecs;
void balance_dirty_pages(struct address_space *mapping);
void balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited(struct address_space *mapping);
int pdflush_operation(void (*fn)(unsigned long), unsigned long arg0);
......
kernel/sysctl.c
View file @ e3e529bf
......@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <linux/sysrq.h>
#include <linux/highuid.h>
#include <linux/writeback.h>
#include <asm/uaccess.h>
......@@ -264,6 +265,19 @@ static ctl_table vm_table[] = {
&pager_daemon, sizeof(pager_daemon_t), 0644, NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{VM_PAGE_CLUSTER, "page-cluster",
&page_cluster, sizeof(int), 0644, NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{VM_DIRTY_BACKGROUND, "dirty_background_ratio",
&dirty_background_ratio, sizeof(dirty_background_ratio),
0644, NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{VM_DIRTY_ASYNC, "dirty_async_ratio", &dirty_async_ratio,
sizeof(dirty_async_ratio), 0644, NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{VM_DIRTY_SYNC, "dirty_sync_ratio", &dirty_sync_ratio,
sizeof(dirty_sync_ratio), 0644, NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{VM_DIRTY_WB_CS, "dirty_writeback_centisecs",
&dirty_writeback_centisecs, sizeof(dirty_writeback_centisecs), 0644,
NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{VM_DIRTY_EXPIRE_CS, "dirty_expire_centisecs",
&dirty_expire_centisecs, sizeof(dirty_expire_centisecs), 0644,
NULL, &proc_dointvec},
{0}
};
......
mm/page-writeback.c
View file @ e3e529bf
......@@ -26,29 +26,56 @@
* The maximum number of pages to writeout in a single bdflush/kupdate
* operation. We do this so we don't hold I_LOCK against an inode for
* enormous amounts of time, which would block a userspace task which has
* been forced to throttle against that inode.
* been forced to throttle against that inode. Also, the code reevaluates
* the dirty each time it has written this many pages.
*/
#define MAX_WRITEBACK_PAGES 1024
/*
* Memory thresholds, in percentages
* FIXME: expose these via /proc or whatever.
* After a CPU has dirtied this many pages, balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited
* will look to see if it needs to force writeback or throttling. Probably
* should be scaled by memory size.
*/
#define RATELIMIT_PAGES 1000
/*
* When balance_dirty_pages decides that the caller needs to perform some
* non-background writeback, this is how many pages it will attempt to write.
* It should be somewhat larger than RATELIMIT_PAGES to ensure that reasonably
* large amounts of I/O are submitted.
*/
#define SYNC_WRITEBACK_PAGES 1500
/*
* Dirty memory thresholds, in percentages
*/
/*
* Start background writeback (via pdflush) at this level
*/
static int dirty_background_ratio = 40;
int dirty_background_ratio = 40;
/*
* The generator of dirty data starts async writeback at this level
*/
static int dirty_async_ratio = 50;
int dirty_async_ratio = 50;
/*
* The generator of dirty data performs sync writeout at this level
*/
static int dirty_sync_ratio = 60;
int dirty_sync_ratio = 60;
/*
* The interval between `kupdate'-style writebacks.
*/
int dirty_writeback_centisecs = 5 * 100;
/*
* The largest amount of time for which data is allowed to remain dirty
*/
int dirty_expire_centisecs = 30 * 100;
static void background_writeout(unsigned long _min_pages);
......@@ -84,12 +111,12 @@ void balance_dirty_pages(struct address_space *mapping)
sync_thresh = (dirty_sync_ratio * tot) / 100;
if (dirty_and_writeback > sync_thresh) {
int nr_to_write = 1500;
int nr_to_write = SYNC_WRITEBACK_PAGES;
writeback_unlocked_inodes(&nr_to_write, WB_SYNC_LAST, NULL);
get_page_state(&ps);
} else if (dirty_and_writeback > async_thresh) {
int nr_to_write = 1500;
int nr_to_write = SYNC_WRITEBACK_PAGES;
writeback_unlocked_inodes(&nr_to_write, WB_SYNC_NONE, NULL);
get_page_state(&ps);
......@@ -118,7 +145,7 @@ void balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited(struct address_space *mapping)
int cpu;
cpu = get_cpu();
if (ratelimits[cpu].count++ >= 1000) {
if (ratelimits[cpu].count++ >= RATELIMIT_PAGES) {
ratelimits[cpu].count = 0;
put_cpu();
balance_dirty_pages(mapping);
......@@ -162,17 +189,6 @@ void wakeup_bdflush(void)
pdflush_operation(background_writeout, ps.nr_dirty);
}
/*
* The interval between `kupdate'-style writebacks.
*
* Traditional kupdate writes back data which is 30-35 seconds old.
* This one does that, but it also writes back just 1/6th of the dirty
* data. This is to avoid great I/O storms.
*
* We chunk the writes up and yield, to permit any throttled page-allocators
* to perform their I/O against a large file.
*/
static int wb_writeback_jifs = 5 * HZ;
static struct timer_list wb_timer;
/*
......@@ -183,9 +199,9 @@ static struct timer_list wb_timer;
* just walks the superblock inode list, writing back any inodes which are
* older than a specific point in time.
*
* Try to run once per wb_writeback_jifs jiffies. But if a writeback event
* takes longer than a wb_writeback_jifs interval, then leave a one-second
* gap.
* Try to run once per dirty_writeback_centisecs. But if a writeback event
* takes longer than a dirty_writeback_centisecs interval, then leave a
* one-second gap.
*
* older_than_this takes precedence over nr_to_write. So we'll only write back
* all dirty pages if they are all attached to "old" mappings.
......@@ -201,9 +217,9 @@ static void wb_kupdate(unsigned long arg)
sync_supers();
get_page_state(&ps);
oldest_jif = jiffies - 30*HZ;
oldest_jif = jiffies - (dirty_expire_centisecs * HZ) / 100;
start_jif = jiffies;
next_jif = start_jif + wb_writeback_jifs;
next_jif = start_jif + (dirty_writeback_centisecs * HZ) / 100;
nr_to_write = ps.nr_dirty;
writeback_unlocked_inodes(&nr_to_write, WB_SYNC_NONE, &oldest_jif);
blk_run_queues();
......@@ -223,7 +239,7 @@ static void wb_timer_fn(unsigned long unused)
static int __init wb_timer_init(void)
{
init_timer(&wb_timer);
wb_timer.expires = jiffies + wb_writeback_jifs;
wb_timer.expires = jiffies + (dirty_writeback_centisecs * HZ) / 100;
wb_timer.data = 0;
wb_timer.function = wb_timer_fn;
add_timer(&wb_timer);
......
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