On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 8:57 AM, Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > I would like to resurrect the following Dave's patch. The last time it > has been posted was here https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/9/16/250 and there > didn't seem to be any strong opposition. > Kosaki was worried about possible excessive logging when somebody drops > caches too often (but then he claimed he didn't have a strong opinion > on that) but I would say opposite. If somebody does that then I would > really like to know that from the log when supporting a system because > it almost for sure means that there is something fishy going on. It is > also worth mentioning that only root can write drop caches so this is > not an flooding attack vector. > I am bringing that up again because this can be really helpful when > chasing strange performance issues which (surprise surprise) turn out to > be related to artificially dropped caches done because the admin thinks > this would help... > > I have just refreshed the original patch on top of the current mm tree > but I could live with KERN_INFO as well if people think that KERN_NOTICE > is too hysterical. > --- > From 1f4058be9b089bc9d43d71bc63989335d7637d8d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 > From: Dave Hansen <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:30:54 +0200 > Subject: [PATCH] add some drop_caches documentation and info messsge > > There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and a load of blog posts > suggesting that using "drop_caches" periodically keeps your system > running in "tip top shape". Perhaps adding some kernel > documentation will increase the amount of accurate data on its use. > > If we are not shrinking caches effectively, then we have real bugs. > Using drop_caches will simply mask the bugs and make them harder > to find, but certainly does not fix them, nor is it an appropriate > "workaround" to limit the size of the caches. > > It's a great debugging tool, and is really handy for doing things > like repeatable benchmark runs. So, add a bit more documentation > about it, and add a little KERN_NOTICE. It should help developers > who are chasing down reclaim-related bugs. > > [mhocko@xxxxxxx: refreshed to current -mm tree] > Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Reviewed-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> Looks fine. Acked-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> -- 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>