Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753955Ab3CUBVL (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:21:11 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:13640 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751699Ab3CUBVK (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:21:10 -0400 Message-ID: <514A604E.40303@redhat.com> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:20:14 -0400 From: Rik van Riel User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130110 Thunderbird/17.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mel Gorman CC: Linux-MM , Jiri Slaby , Valdis Kletnieks , Zlatko Calusic , Johannes Weiner , dormando , Satoru Moriya , Michal Hocko , LKML Subject: Re: [PATCH 05/10] mm: vmscan: Do not allow kswapd to scan at maximum priority References: <1363525456-10448-1-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de> <1363525456-10448-6-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de> In-Reply-To: <1363525456-10448-6-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1547 Lines: 44 On 03/17/2013 09:04 AM, Mel Gorman wrote: > Page reclaim at priority 0 will scan the entire LRU as priority 0 is > considered to be a near OOM condition. Kswapd can reach priority 0 quite > easily if it is encountering a large number of pages it cannot reclaim > such as pages under writeback. When this happens, kswapd reclaims very > aggressively even though there may be no real risk of allocation failure > or OOM. > > This patch prevents kswapd reaching priority 0 and trying to reclaim > the world. Direct reclaimers will still reach priority 0 in the event > of an OOM situation. > > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman > --- > mm/vmscan.c | 2 +- > 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) > > diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c > index 7513bd1..af3bb6f 100644 > --- a/mm/vmscan.c > +++ b/mm/vmscan.c > @@ -2891,7 +2891,7 @@ static unsigned long balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int order, > */ > if (raise_priority || !this_reclaimed) > sc.priority--; > - } while (sc.priority >= 0 && > + } while (sc.priority >= 1 && > !pgdat_balanced(pgdat, order, *classzone_idx)); > > out: > If priority 0 is way way way way way too aggressive, what makes priority 1 safe? This makes me wonder, are the priorities useful at all to kswapd? -- All rights reversed -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/