Sorry for my laziness. It's time to repost with some test result. Recently, there was a reported problem about thrashing. (http://marc.info/?l=rsync&m=128885034930933&w=2) It happens by backup workloads(ex, nightly rsync). That's because the workload makes just use-once pages and touches pages twice. It promotes the page into active list so that it results in working set page eviction. So app developer want to support POSIX_FADV_NOREUSE but other OSes include linux don't support it. (http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=128928979512086&w=2) By other approach, app developers use POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED. But it has a problem. If kernel meets page is going on writing during invalidate_mapping_pages, it can't work. It makes application programmer to use it hard since they always consider sync data before calling fadivse(..POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED) to make sure the pages couldn't be discardable. At last, they can't use deferred write of kernel so see performance loss. (http://insights.oetiker.ch/linux/fadvise.html) In fact, invalidation is very big hint to reclaimer. It means we don't use the page any more. So the idea in this series is that let's move invalidated pages but not-freed page until into inactive list. It can help relcaim efficiency very much so that it can prevent eviction working set. My exeperiment is folowing as. Test Environment : DRAM : 2G, CPU : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU Rsync backup directory size : 16G rsync version is 3.0.7. rsync patch is Ben's fadivse. The stress scenario do following jobs with parallel. 1. git clone linux-2.6 1. make all -j4 linux-mmotm 3. rsync src dst nrns : no-patched rsync + no stress prns : patched rsync + no stress nrs : no-patched rsync + stress prs : patched rsync + stress For profiling, I add some vmstat. pginvalidate : the total number of pages which are moved by this patch. pgreclaim : the number of pages which are moved at inactive's tail by PG_reclaim of pginvalidate NRNS PRNS NRS PRS Elapsed time 36:01.49 37:13.58 01:23:24 01:21:45 nr_vmscan_write 184 1 296 509 pgactivate 76559 84714 445214 463143 pgdeactivate 19360 40184 74302 91423 pginvalidate 0 2240333 0 1769147 pgreclaim 0 1849651 0 1650796 pgfault 406208 421860 72485217 70334416 pgmajfault 212 334 5149 3688 pgsteal_dma 0 0 0 0 pgsteal_normal 2645174 1545116 2521098 1578651 pgsteal_high 5162080 2562269 6074720 3137294 pgsteal_movable 0 0 0 0 pgscan_kswapd_dma 0 0 0 0 pgscan_kswapd_normal 2641732 1545374 2499894 1557882 pgscan_kswapd_high 5143794 2567981 5999585 3051150 pgscan_kswapd_movable 0 0 0 0 pgscan_direct_dma 0 0 0 0 pgscan_direct_normal 3643 0 21613 21238 pgscan_direct_high 20174 1783 76980 87848 pgscan_direct_movable 0 0 0 0 pginodesteal 130 1029 3510 24100 slabs_scanned 1421824 1648128 1870720 1880320 kswapd_steal 7785153 4105620 8498332 4608372 kswapd_inodesteal 189432 474052 342835 472503 pageoutrun 100687 52282 145712 70946 allocstall 22 1 149 163 pgrotated 0 2231408 2932 1765393 unevictable_pgs_scanned 0 0 0 0 In stress test(NRS vs PRS), pgsteal_[normal|high] are reduced by 37% and 48%. pgscan_kswapd_[normal|high] are reduced by 37% and 49%. It means although the VM scan small window, it can reclaim enough pages to work well and prevent eviction unnecessary page. rsync program's elapsed time is reduced by 1.5 minutes but I think rsync's fadvise isn't good because [NRNS vs NRS] it takes one minutes longer time. I think it's because calling unnecessary fadivse system calls so that rsync's fadvise should be smart then effect would be much better than now. The pgmajor fault is reduced by 28%. It's good. What I can't understand is that why inode steal is increased. If anyone know it, please explain to me. Anyway, this patch improves reclaim efficiency very much. Recently, Steven Barrentt already applied this series to his project kernel "Liquorix kernel" and said followin as with one problem. (The problem is solved by [3/4]. See the description) " I've been having really good results with your new patch set that mitigates the problem where a backup utility or something like that reads each file once and eventually evicting the original working set out of the page cache. ... ... These patches solved some problems on a friend's desktop. He said that his wife wanted to send me kisses and hugs because their computer was so responsive after the patches were applied. " So I think this patch series solves real problem. - [1/4] is to move invalidated page which is dirty/writeback on active list into inactive list's head. - [2/4] is to move memcg reclaimable page on inactive's tail. - [3/4] is for moving invalidated page into inactive list's tail when the page's writeout is completed for reclaim asap. - [4/4] is to add profing information for evaluation. This patches are based on mmotm-02-04 Changelog since v4: - Remove patches related to madvise and clean up patch of swap.c (I will separate madvise issue from this series and repost after merging this series) Minchan Kim (4): [1/4] deactivate invalidated pages [2/4] memcg: move memcg reclaimable page into tail of inactive list [3/4] Reclaim invalidated page ASAP [4/4] add profile information for invalidated page include/linux/memcontrol.h | 6 ++ include/linux/swap.h | 1 + include/linux/vmstat.h | 4 +- mm/memcontrol.c | 27 ++++++++++ mm/page-writeback.c | 12 ++++- mm/swap.c | 119 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- mm/truncate.c | 17 +++++-- mm/vmstat.c | 3 + 8 files changed, 180 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . 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