kernel/linux.git/Documentation/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.rst, branch v6.19.11

Documentation: zram: update IDLE pages tracking documentation

2025-05-12T00:48:33+00:00

Move IDLE pages tracking into a separate chapter because there are multiple features that use (or depend on) it either in built-in variant ("mark all") or in extended variant (ac-time tracking). In addition, recompression doesn't require memory tracking to be enabled in order to be able to perform idle recompression. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250416042833.3858827-1-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Reported-by: Shin Kawamura Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Minchan Kim Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

zram: modernize writeback interface

2025-05-12T00:48:09+00:00

The writeback interface supports a page_index=N parameter which performs writeback of the given page. Since we rarely need to writeback just one single page, the typical use case involves a number of writeback calls, each performing writeback of one page: echo page_index=100 > zram0/writeback ... echo page_index=200 > zram0/writeback echo page_index=500 > zram0/writeback ... echo page_index=700 > zram0/writeback One obvious downside of this is that it increases the number of syscalls. Less obvious, but a significantly more important downside, is that when given only one page to post-process zram cannot perform an optimal target selection. This becomes a critical limitation when writeback_limit is enabled, because under writeback_limit we want to guarantee the highest memory savings hence we first need to writeback pages that release the highest amount of zsmalloc pool memory. This patch adds page_indexes=LOW-HIGH parameter to the writeback interface: echo page_indexes=100-200 page_indexes=500-700 > zram0/writeback This gives zram a chance to apply an optimal target selection strategy on each iteration of the writeback loop. We also now permit multiple page_index parameters per call (previously zram would recognize only one page_index) and a mix or single pages and page ranges: echo page_index=42 page_index=99 page_indexes=100-200 \ page_indexes=500-700 > zram0/writeback Apart from that the patch also unifies parameters passing and resembles other "modern" zram device attributes (e.g. recompression), while the old interface used a mixed scheme: values-less parameters for mode and a key=value format for page_index. We still support the "old" value-less format for compatibility reasons. [senozhatsky@chromium.org: simplify parse_page_index() range checks, per Brian] nk: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250404015327.2427684-1-senozhatsky@chromium.org [sozhatsky@chromium.org: fix uninitialized variable in zram_writeback_slots(), per Dan] nk: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250409112611.1154282-1-senozhatsky@chromium.org Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250327015818.4148660-1-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Reviewed-by: Brian Geffon Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Richard Chang Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Dan Carpenter Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

zram: remove max_comp_streams device attr

2025-03-17T05:06:33+00:00

max_comp_streams device attribute has been defunct since May 2016 when zram switched to per-CPU compression streams, remove it. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250303022425.285971-5-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Hillf Danton Cc: Kairui Song Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior Cc: Yosry Ahmed Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

Documentation: zram: fix dictionary spelling

2024-12-13T15:52:22+00:00

Fixes a typo in the ZRAM documentation where 'dictioary' was misspelled. Corrected it to 'dictionary' in the example usage of 'algorithm_params'. Signed-off-by: Sarveshwaar SS Reviewed-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241125165122.17521-1-sarvesh20123@gmail.com

zram: permit only one post-processing operation at a time

2024-11-06T00:56:22+00:00

Both recompress and writeback soon will unlock slots during processing, which makes things too complex wrt possible race-conditions. We still want to clear PP_SLOT in slot_free, because this is how we figure out that slot that was selected for post-processing has been released under us and when we start post-processing we check if slot still has PP_SLOT set. At the same time, theoretically, we can have something like this: CPU0 CPU1 recompress scan slots set PP_SLOT unlock slot slot_free clear PP_SLOT allocate PP_SLOT writeback scan slots set PP_SLOT unlock slot select PP-slot test PP_SLOT So recompress will not detect that slot has been re-used and re-selected for concurrent writeback post-processing. Make sure that we only permit on post-processing operation at a time. So now recompress and writeback post-processing don't race against each other, we only need to handle slot re-use (slot_free and write), which is handled individually by each pp operation. Having recompress and writeback competing for the same slots is not exactly good anyway (can't imagine anyone doing that). Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240917021020.883356-3-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Minchan Kim Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

zram: support priority parameter in recompression

2024-09-09T23:39:12+00:00

recompress device attribute supports alg=NAME parameter so that we can specify only one particular algorithm we want to perform recompression with. However, with algo params we now can have several exactly same secondary algorithms but each with its own params tuning (e.g. priority 1 configured to use more aggressive level, and priority 2 configured to use a pre-trained dictionary). Support priority=NUM parameter so that we can correctly determine which secondary algorithm we want to use. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240902105656.1383858-25-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Nick Terrell Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

Documentation/zram: add documentation for algorithm parameters

2024-09-09T23:39:11+00:00

Document brief description of compression algorithms' parameters: compression level and pre-trained dictionary. [senozhatsky@chromium.org: trivial fixup] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240903063722.1603592-1-senozhatsky@chromium.org Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240902105656.1383858-24-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Nick Terrell Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

zram: introduce algorithm_params device attribute

2024-09-09T23:39:09+00:00

This attribute is used to setup compression algorithms' parameters, so we can tweak algorithms' characteristics. At this point only 'level' is supported (to be extended in the future). Each call sets up parameters for one particular algorithm, which should be specified either by the algorithm's priority or algo name. This is expected to be called after corresponding algorithm is selected via comp_algorithm or recomp_algorithm. echo "priority=0 level=1" > /sys/block/zram0/algorithm_params or echo "algo=zstd level=1" > /sys/block/zram0/algorithm_params Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240902105656.1383858-16-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Nick Terrell Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

zram: introduce custom comp backends API

2024-09-09T23:39:07+00:00

Moving to custom backends implementation gives us ability to have our own minimalistic and extendable API, and algorithms tunings becomes possible. The list of compression backends is empty at this point, we will add backends in the followup patches. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240902105656.1383858-5-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Nick Terrell Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

zram: add max_pages param to recompression

2024-04-26T03:56:30+00:00

Introduce "max_pages" param to recompress device attribute which sets an upper limit on the number of entries (pages) zram attempts to recompress (in this particular recompression call). S/W recompression can be quite expensive so limiting the number of pages recompress touches can be quite helpful. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240329094050.2815699-1-senozhatsky@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky Acked-by: Brian Geffon Cc: Minchan Kim Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton