This patch adds the needed documentation for the use_zero_pages property. Signed-off-by: Claudio Imbrenda <imbrenda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/vm/ksm.txt | 14 ++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt b/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt index f34a8ee..0c64a81d 100644 --- a/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt +++ b/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt @@ -80,6 +80,20 @@ run - set 0 to stop ksmd from running but keep merged pages, Default: 0 (must be changed to 1 to activate KSM, except if CONFIG_SYSFS is disabled) +use_zero_pages - specifies whether empty pages (i.e. allocated pages + that only contain zeroes) should be treated specially. + When set to 1, empty pages are merged with the kernel + zero page(s) instead of with each other as it would + happen normally. This can improve the performance on + architectures with coloured zero pages, depending on + the workload. Care should be taken when enabling this + setting, as it can potentially degrade the performance + of KSM for some workloads, for example if the checksums + of pages candidate for merging match the checksum of + an empty page. This setting can be changed at any time, + it is only effective for pages merged after the change. + Default: 0 (normal KSM behaviour as in earlier releases) + The effectiveness of KSM and MADV_MERGEABLE is shown in /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/: pages_shared - how many shared pages are being used -- 1.9.1 -- 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>