Add the description of KSM profit and how to determine it separately in system-wide range and inner a single process. Signed-off-by: xu xin <xu.xin16@xxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Xiaokai Ran <ran.xiaokai@xxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Yang Yang <yang.yang29@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst | 36 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 36 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst index b244f0202a03..c2893027cbe6 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst @@ -184,6 +184,42 @@ The maximum possible ``pages_sharing/pages_shared`` ratio is limited by the ``max_page_sharing`` tunable. To increase the ratio ``max_page_sharing`` must be increased accordingly. +Monitoring KSM profit +===================== + +KSM can save memory by merging identical pages, but also can consume +additional memory, because it needs to generate a number of rmap_items to +save each scanned page's brief rmap information. Some of these pages may +be merged, but some may not be abled to be merged after being checked +several times, which are unprofitable memory consumed. + +1) How to determine whether KSM save memory or consume memory in system-wide + range? Here is a simple approximate calculation for reference:: + + general_profit =~ pages_sharing * sizeof(page) - (all_rmap_items) * + sizeof(rmap_item); + + where all_rmap_items can be easily obtained by summing ``pages_sharing``, + ``pages_shared``, ``pages_unshared`` and ``pages_volatile``. + +2) The KSM profit inner a single process can be similarly obtained by the + following approximate calculation:: + + process_profit =~ ksm_merging_pages * sizeof(page) - + ksm_rmp_items * sizeof(rmap_item). + + where both ksm_merging_pages and ksm_rmp_items are shown under the + directory ``/proc/<pid>/``. + +From the perspective of application, a high ratio of ``ksm_rmp_items`` to +``ksm_merging_pages`` means a bad madvise-applied policy, so developers or +administrators have to rethink how to change madvise policy. Giving an example +for reference, a page's size is usually 4K, and the rmap_item's size is +separately 32B on 32-bit CPU architecture and 64B on 64-bit CPU architecture. +so if the ``ksm_rmp_items/ksm_merging_pages`` ratio exceeds 64 on 64-bit CPU +or exceeds 128 on 32-bit CPU, then the app's madvise policy should be dropped, +because the ksm profit is approximately zero or negative. + Monitoring KSM events ===================== -- 2.25.1
