Add description of THP handling into unevictable-lru.txt. Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/vm/unevictable-lru.txt | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/vm/unevictable-lru.txt b/Documentation/vm/unevictable-lru.txt index fa3b527086fa..0026a8d33fc0 100644 --- a/Documentation/vm/unevictable-lru.txt +++ b/Documentation/vm/unevictable-lru.txt @@ -461,6 +461,27 @@ unevictable LRU is enabled, the work of compaction is mostly handled by the page migration code and the same work flow as described in MIGRATING MLOCKED PAGES will apply. +MLOCKING TRANSPARENT HUGE PAGES +------------------------------- + +A transparent huge page is represented by a single entry on an LRU list. +Therefore, we can only make unevictable an entire compound page, not +individual subpages. + +If a user tries to mlock() part of a huge page, we want the rest of the +page to be reclaimable. + +We cannot just split the page on partial mlock() as split_huge_page() can +fail and new intermittent failure mode for the syscall is undesirable. + +We handle this by keeping PTE-mapped huge pages on normal LRU lists: the +PMD on border of VM_LOCKED VMA will be split into PTE table. + +This way the huge page is accessible for vmscan. Under memory pressure the +page will be split, subpages which belong to VM_LOCKED VMAs will be moved +to unevictable LRU and the rest can be reclaimed. + +See also comment in follow_trans_huge_pmd(). mmap(MAP_LOCKED) SYSTEM CALL HANDLING ------------------------------------- -- 2.8.1 -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>