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author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2018-06-04 22:34:27 +0300 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2018-06-04 22:34:27 +0300 |
commit | eeee3149aaa022145b2659e3b0601dc705d69402 (patch) | |
tree | 1b537cccc059cab62d7d2e22b7583b192d9e8c15 /Documentation/vm/zsmalloc.rst | |
parent | c5e7a7ea22d5677f7c70028908372cff6948ecdc (diff) | |
parent | a49d9c0ae46e149a22aefa8251d07dddd5611851 (diff) | |
download | linux-eeee3149aaa022145b2659e3b0601dc705d69402.tar.xz |
Merge tag 'docs-4.18' of git://git.lwn.net/linux
Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet:
"There's been a fair amount of work in the docs tree this time around,
including:
- Extensive RST conversions and organizational work in the
memory-management docs thanks to Mike Rapoport.
- An update of Documentation/features from Andrea Parri and a script
to keep it updated.
- Various LICENSES updates from Thomas, along with a script to check
SPDX tags.
- Work to fix dangling references to documentation files; this
involved a fair number of one-liner comment changes outside of
Documentation/
... and the usual list of documentation improvements, typo fixes, etc"
* tag 'docs-4.18' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (103 commits)
Documentation: document hung_task_panic kernel parameter
docs/admin-guide/mm: add high level concepts overview
docs/vm: move ksm and transhuge from "user" to "internals" section.
docs: Use the kerneldoc comments for memalloc_no*()
doc: document scope NOFS, NOIO APIs
docs: update kernel versions and dates in tables
docs/vm: transhuge: split userspace bits to admin-guide/mm/transhuge
docs/vm: transhuge: minor updates
docs/vm: transhuge: change sections order
Documentation: arm: clean up Marvell Berlin family info
Documentation: gpio: driver: Fix a typo and some odd grammar
docs: ranoops.rst: fix location of ramoops.txt
scripts/documentation-file-ref-check: rewrite it in perl with auto-fix mode
docs: uio-howto.rst: use a code block to solve a warning
mm, THP, doc: Add document for thp_swpout/thp_swpout_fallback
w1: w1_io.c: fix a kernel-doc warning
Documentation/process/posting: wrap text at 80 cols
docs: admin-guide: add cgroup-v2 documentation
Revert "Documentation/features/vm: Remove arch support status file for 'pte_special'"
Documentation: refcount-vs-atomic: Update reference to LKMM doc.
...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/zsmalloc.rst')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/zsmalloc.rst | 82 |
1 files changed, 82 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/zsmalloc.rst b/Documentation/vm/zsmalloc.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..6e79893d6132 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/zsmalloc.rst @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +.. _zsmalloc: + +======== +zsmalloc +======== + +This allocator is designed for use with zram. Thus, the allocator is +supposed to work well under low memory conditions. In particular, it +never attempts higher order page allocation which is very likely to +fail under memory pressure. On the other hand, if we just use single +(0-order) pages, it would suffer from very high fragmentation -- +any object of size PAGE_SIZE/2 or larger would occupy an entire page. +This was one of the major issues with its predecessor (xvmalloc). + +To overcome these issues, zsmalloc allocates a bunch of 0-order pages +and links them together using various 'struct page' fields. These linked +pages act as a single higher-order page i.e. an object can span 0-order +page boundaries. The code refers to these linked pages as a single entity +called zspage. + +For simplicity, zsmalloc can only allocate objects of size up to PAGE_SIZE +since this satisfies the requirements of all its current users (in the +worst case, page is incompressible and is thus stored "as-is" i.e. in +uncompressed form). For allocation requests larger than this size, failure +is returned (see zs_malloc). + +Additionally, zs_malloc() does not return a dereferenceable pointer. +Instead, it returns an opaque handle (unsigned long) which encodes actual +location of the allocated object. The reason for this indirection is that +zsmalloc does not keep zspages permanently mapped since that would cause +issues on 32-bit systems where the VA region for kernel space mappings +is very small. So, before using the allocating memory, the object has to +be mapped using zs_map_object() to get a usable pointer and subsequently +unmapped using zs_unmap_object(). + +stat +==== + +With CONFIG_ZSMALLOC_STAT, we could see zsmalloc internal information via +``/sys/kernel/debug/zsmalloc/<user name>``. Here is a sample of stat output:: + + # cat /sys/kernel/debug/zsmalloc/zram0/classes + + class size almost_full almost_empty obj_allocated obj_used pages_used pages_per_zspage + ... + ... + 9 176 0 1 186 129 8 4 + 10 192 1 0 2880 2872 135 3 + 11 208 0 1 819 795 42 2 + 12 224 0 1 219 159 12 4 + ... + ... + + +class + index +size + object size zspage stores +almost_empty + the number of ZS_ALMOST_EMPTY zspages(see below) +almost_full + the number of ZS_ALMOST_FULL zspages(see below) +obj_allocated + the number of objects allocated +obj_used + the number of objects allocated to the user +pages_used + the number of pages allocated for the class +pages_per_zspage + the number of 0-order pages to make a zspage + +We assign a zspage to ZS_ALMOST_EMPTY fullness group when n <= N / f, where + +* n = number of allocated objects +* N = total number of objects zspage can store +* f = fullness_threshold_frac(ie, 4 at the moment) + +Similarly, we assign zspage to: + +* ZS_ALMOST_FULL when n > N / f +* ZS_EMPTY when n == 0 +* ZS_FULL when n == N |