<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>user/sven/linux.git/include/linux/mm.h, branch v3.10.93</title>
<subtitle>Linux Kernel
</subtitle>
<id>https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/atom?h=v3.10.93</id>
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<updated>2015-04-29T08:34:00Z</updated>
<entry>
<title>vm: add VM_FAULT_SIGSEGV handling support</title>
<updated>2015-04-29T08:34:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2015-01-29T18:51:32Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=0c42d1fbb33f7e3fc97a4854e1f9804951ebdd0d'/>
<id>urn:sha1:0c42d1fbb33f7e3fc97a4854e1f9804951ebdd0d</id>
<content type='text'>
commit 33692f27597fcab536d7cbbcc8f52905133e4aa7 upstream.

The core VM already knows about VM_FAULT_SIGBUS, but cannot return a
"you should SIGSEGV" error, because the SIGSEGV case was generally
handled by the caller - usually the architecture fault handler.

That results in lots of duplication - all the architecture fault
handlers end up doing very similar "look up vma, check permissions, do
retries etc" - but it generally works.  However, there are cases where
the VM actually wants to SIGSEGV, and applications _expect_ SIGSEGV.

In particular, when accessing the stack guard page, libsigsegv expects a
SIGSEGV.  And it usually got one, because the stack growth is handled by
that duplicated architecture fault handler.

However, when the generic VM layer started propagating the error return
from the stack expansion in commit fee7e49d4514 ("mm: propagate error
from stack expansion even for guard page"), that now exposed the
existing VM_FAULT_SIGBUS result to user space.  And user space really
expected SIGSEGV, not SIGBUS.

To fix that case, we need to add a VM_FAULT_SIGSEGV, and teach all those
duplicate architecture fault handlers about it.  They all already have
the code to handle SIGSEGV, so it's about just tying that new return
value to the existing code, but it's all a bit annoying.

This is the mindless minimal patch to do this.  A more extensive patch
would be to try to gather up the mostly shared fault handling logic into
one generic helper routine, and long-term we really should do that
cleanup.

Just from this patch, you can generally see that most architectures just
copied (directly or indirectly) the old x86 way of doing things, but in
the meantime that original x86 model has been improved to hold the VM
semaphore for shorter times etc and to handle VM_FAULT_RETRY and other
"newer" things, so it would be a good idea to bring all those
improvements to the generic case and teach other architectures about
them too.

Reported-and-tested-by: Takashi Iwai &lt;tiwai@suse.de&gt;
Tested-by: Jan Engelhardt &lt;jengelh@inai.de&gt;
Acked-by: Heiko Carstens &lt;heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com&gt; # "s390 still compiles and boots"
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
[shengyong: Backport to 3.10
 - adjust context
 - ignore modification for arch nios2, because 3.10 does not support it
 - ignore modification for driver lustre, because 3.10 does not support it
 - ignore VM_FAULT_FALLBACK in VM_FAULT_ERROR, becase 3.10 does not support
   this flag
 - add SIGSEGV handling to powerpc/cell spu_fault.c, because 3.10 does not
   separate it to copro_fault.c
 - add SIGSEGV handling in mm/memory.c, because 3.10 does not separate it
   to gup.c
]
Signed-off-by: Sheng Yong &lt;shengyong1@huawei.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: propagate error from stack expansion even for guard page</title>
<updated>2015-01-16T14:59:03Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2015-01-06T21:00:05Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=88b5d12c6413c7b80c3df4527b09c9d5f65c1c0a'/>
<id>urn:sha1:88b5d12c6413c7b80c3df4527b09c9d5f65c1c0a</id>
<content type='text'>
commit fee7e49d45149fba60156f5b59014f764d3e3728 upstream.

Jay Foad reports that the address sanitizer test (asan) sometimes gets
confused by a stack pointer that ends up being outside the stack vma
that is reported by /proc/maps.

This happens due to an interaction between RLIMIT_STACK and the guard
page: when we do the guard page check, we ignore the potential error
from the stack expansion, which effectively results in a missing guard
page, since the expected stack expansion won't have been done.

And since /proc/maps explicitly ignores the guard page (commit
d7824370e263: "mm: fix up some user-visible effects of the stack guard
page"), the stack pointer ends up being outside the reported stack area.

This is the minimal patch: it just propagates the error.  It also
effectively makes the guard page part of the stack limit, which in turn
measn that the actual real stack is one page less than the stack limit.

Let's see if anybody notices.  We could teach acct_stack_growth() to
allow an extra page for a grow-up/grow-down stack in the rlimit test,
but I don't want to add more complexity if it isn't needed.

Reported-and-tested-by: Jay Foad &lt;jay.foad@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>arch: mm: pass userspace fault flag to generic fault handler</title>
<updated>2014-11-21T17:22:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Johannes Weiner</name>
<email>hannes@cmpxchg.org</email>
</author>
<published>2013-09-12T22:13:39Z</published>
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<id>urn:sha1:e2ec2c2b96808afa2f57ec7d7949691146fca341</id>
<content type='text'>
commit 759496ba6407c6994d6a5ce3a5e74937d7816208 upstream.

Unlike global OOM handling, memory cgroup code will invoke the OOM killer
in any OOM situation because it has no way of telling faults occuring in
kernel context - which could be handled more gracefully - from
user-triggered faults.

Pass a flag that identifies faults originating in user space from the
architecture-specific fault handlers to generic code so that memcg OOM
handling can be improved.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Reviewed-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.cz&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki &lt;kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com&gt;
Cc: azurIt &lt;azurit@pobox.sk&gt;
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro &lt;kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Cong Wang &lt;xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>vfs: fix data corruption when blocksize &lt; pagesize for mmaped data</title>
<updated>2014-11-14T16:47:54Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Jan Kara</name>
<email>jack@suse.cz</email>
</author>
<published>2014-10-02T01:49:18Z</published>
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<id>urn:sha1:6cbdf1151168e44f93866f6af751442b937f8989</id>
<content type='text'>
commit 90a8020278c1598fafd071736a0846b38510309c upstream.

-&gt;page_mkwrite() is used by filesystems to allocate blocks under a page
which is becoming writeably mmapped in some process' address space. This
allows a filesystem to return a page fault if there is not enough space
available, user exceeds quota or similar problem happens, rather than
silently discarding data later when writepage is called.

However VFS fails to call -&gt;page_mkwrite() in all the cases where
filesystems need it when blocksize &lt; pagesize. For example when
blocksize = 1024, pagesize = 4096 the following is problematic:
  ftruncate(fd, 0);
  pwrite(fd, buf, 1024, 0);
  map = mmap(NULL, 1024, PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
  map[0] = 'a';       ----&gt; page_mkwrite() for index 0 is called
  ftruncate(fd, 10000); /* or even pwrite(fd, buf, 1, 10000) */
  mremap(map, 1024, 10000, 0);
  map[4095] = 'a';    ----&gt; no page_mkwrite() called

At the moment -&gt;page_mkwrite() is called, filesystem can allocate only
one block for the page because i_size == 1024. Otherwise it would create
blocks beyond i_size which is generally undesirable. But later at
-&gt;writepage() time, we also need to store data at offset 4095 but we
don't have block allocated for it.

This patch introduces a helper function filesystems can use to have
-&gt;page_mkwrite() called at all the necessary moments.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kara &lt;jack@suse.cz&gt;
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o &lt;tytso@mit.edu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: close PageTail race</title>
<updated>2014-04-03T19:01:05Z</updated>
<author>
<name>David Rientjes</name>
<email>rientjes@google.com</email>
</author>
<published>2014-03-03T23:38:18Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=def52acc90faab583b124f3177d55c15d125e2d1'/>
<id>urn:sha1:def52acc90faab583b124f3177d55c15d125e2d1</id>
<content type='text'>
commit 668f9abbd4334e6c29fa8acd71635c4f9101caa7 upstream.

Commit bf6bddf1924e ("mm: introduce compaction and migration for
ballooned pages") introduces page_count(page) into memory compaction
which dereferences page-&gt;first_page if PageTail(page).

This results in a very rare NULL pointer dereference on the
aforementioned page_count(page).  Indeed, anything that does
compound_head(), including page_count() is susceptible to racing with
prep_compound_page() and seeing a NULL or dangling page-&gt;first_page
pointer.

This patch uses Andrea's implementation of compound_trans_head() that
deals with such a race and makes it the default compound_head()
implementation.  This includes a read memory barrier that ensures that
if PageTail(head) is true that we return a head page that is neither
NULL nor dangling.  The patch then adds a store memory barrier to
prep_compound_page() to ensure page-&gt;first_page is set.

This is the safest way to ensure we see the head page that we are
expecting, PageTail(page) is already in the unlikely() path and the
memory barriers are unfortunately required.

Hugetlbfs is the exception, we don't enforce a store memory barrier
during init since no race is possible.

Signed-off-by: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Holger Kiehl &lt;Holger.Kiehl@dwd.de&gt;
Cc: Christoph Lameter &lt;cl@linux.com&gt;
Cc: Rafael Aquini &lt;aquini@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Cc: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.cz&gt;
Cc: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@suse.de&gt;
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli &lt;aarcange@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Rik van Riel &lt;riel@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;



</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: Make {,set}page_address() static inline if WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL</title>
<updated>2014-01-25T16:27:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Geert Uytterhoeven</name>
<email>geert@linux-m68k.org</email>
</author>
<published>2014-01-21T23:48:47Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=2d36355274980e716b832710e8d18b6396594d4e'/>
<id>urn:sha1:2d36355274980e716b832710e8d18b6396594d4e</id>
<content type='text'>
commit f92f455f67fef27929e6043499414605b0c94872 upstream.

{,set}page_address() are macros if WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL.  If
!WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL, they're plain C functions.

If someone calls them with a void *, this pointer is auto-converted to
struct page * if !WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL, but causes a build failure on
architectures using WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL (arc, m68k and sparc64):

  drivers/md/bcache/bset.c: In function `__btree_sort':
  drivers/md/bcache/bset.c:1190: warning: dereferencing `void *' pointer
  drivers/md/bcache/bset.c:1190: error: request for member `virtual' in something not a structure or union

Convert them to static inline functions to fix this.  There are already
plenty of users of struct page members inside &lt;linux/mm.h&gt;, so there's
no reason to keep them as macros.

Signed-off-by: Geert Uytterhoeven &lt;geert@linux-m68k.org&gt;
Acked-by: Michael S. Tsirkin &lt;mst@redhat.com&gt;
Tested-by: Guenter Roeck &lt;linux@roeck-us.net&gt;
Tested-by: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>include/linux/mm.h: complete the mm_walk definition</title>
<updated>2013-05-08T01:38:26Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Andrew Morton</name>
<email>akpm@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2013-05-07T23:18:10Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=0f157a5b58d0d2890f0ae20da9fe66aa19a91a4d'/>
<id>urn:sha1:0f157a5b58d0d2890f0ae20da9fe66aa19a91a4d</id>
<content type='text'>
That nameless-function-arguments thing drives me batty.  Fix.

Cc: Dave Hansen &lt;dave.hansen@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/signal</title>
<updated>2013-05-01T14:21:43Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2013-05-01T14:21:43Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=08d76760832993050ad8c25e63b56773ef2ca303'/>
<id>urn:sha1:08d76760832993050ad8c25e63b56773ef2ca303</id>
<content type='text'>
Pull compat cleanup from Al Viro:
 "Mostly about syscall wrappers this time; there will be another pile
  with patches in the same general area from various people, but I'd
  rather push those after both that and vfs.git pile are in."

* 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/signal:
  syscalls.h: slightly reduce the jungles of macros
  get rid of union semop in sys_semctl(2) arguments
  make do_mremap() static
  sparc: no need to sign-extend in sync_file_range() wrapper
  ppc compat wrappers for add_key(2) and request_key(2) are pointless
  x86: trim sys_ia32.h
  x86: sys32_kill and sys32_mprotect are pointless
  get rid of compat_sys_semctl() and friends in case of ARCH_WANT_OLD_COMPAT_IPC
  merge compat sys_ipc instances
  consolidate compat lookup_dcookie()
  convert vmsplice to COMPAT_SYSCALL_DEFINE
  switch getrusage() to COMPAT_SYSCALL_DEFINE
  switch epoll_pwait to COMPAT_SYSCALL_DEFINE
  convert sendfile{,64} to COMPAT_SYSCALL_DEFINE
  switch signalfd{,4}() to COMPAT_SYSCALL_DEFINE
  make SYSCALL_DEFINE&lt;n&gt;-generated wrappers do asmlinkage_protect
  make HAVE_SYSCALL_WRAPPERS unconditional
  consolidate cond_syscall and SYSCALL_ALIAS declarations
  teach SYSCALL_DEFINE&lt;n&gt; how to deal with long long/unsigned long long
  get rid of duplicate logics in __SC_....[1-6] definitions
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: replace hardcoded 3% with admin_reserve_pages knob</title>
<updated>2013-04-29T22:54:36Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Andrew Shewmaker</name>
<email>agshew@gmail.com</email>
</author>
<published>2013-04-29T22:08:11Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=4eeab4f5580d11bffedc697684b91b0bca0d5009'/>
<id>urn:sha1:4eeab4f5580d11bffedc697684b91b0bca0d5009</id>
<content type='text'>
Add an admin_reserve_kbytes knob to allow admins to change the hardcoded
memory reserve to something other than 3%, which may be multiple
gigabytes on large memory systems.  Only about 8MB is necessary to
enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred MB are
required even when overcommit is disabled.

This affects OVERCOMMIT_GUESS and OVERCOMMIT_NEVER.

admin_reserve_kbytes is initialized to min(3% free pages, 8MB)

I arrived at 8MB by summing the RSS of sshd or login, bash, and top.

Please see first patch in this series for full background, motivation,
testing, and full changelog.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_admin_reserve() static]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker &lt;agshew@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: limit growth of 3% hardcoded other user reserve</title>
<updated>2013-04-29T22:54:36Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Andrew Shewmaker</name>
<email>agshew@gmail.com</email>
</author>
<published>2013-04-29T22:08:10Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=c9b1d0981fcce3d9976d7b7a56e4e0503bc610dd'/>
<id>urn:sha1:c9b1d0981fcce3d9976d7b7a56e4e0503bc610dd</id>
<content type='text'>
Add user_reserve_kbytes knob.

Limit the growth of the memory reserved for other user processes to
min(3% current process size, user_reserve_pages).  Only about 8MB is
necessary to enable recovery in the default mode, and only a few hundred
MB are required even when overcommit is disabled.

user_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free pages, 128MB)

I arrived at 128MB by taking the max VSZ of sshd, login, bash, and top ...
then adding the RSS of each.

This only affects OVERCOMMIT_NEVER mode.

Background

1. user reserve

__vm_enough_memory reserves a hardcoded 3% of the current process size for
other applications when overcommit is disabled.  This was done so that a
user could recover if they launched a memory hogging process.  Without the
reserve, a user would easily run into a message such as:

bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory

2. admin reserve

Additionally, a hardcoded 3% of free memory is reserved for root in both
overcommit 'guess' and 'never' modes.  This was intended to prevent a
scenario where root-cant-log-in and perform recovery operations.

Note that this reserve shrinks, and doesn't guarantee a useful reserve.

Motivation

The two hardcoded memory reserves should be updated to account for current
memory sizes.

Also, the admin reserve would be more useful if it didn't shrink too much.

When the current code was originally written, 1GB was considered
"enterprise".  Now the 3% reserve can grow to multiple GB on large memory
systems, and it only needs to be a few hundred MB at most to enable a user
or admin to recover a system with an unwanted memory hogging process.

I've found that reducing these reserves is especially beneficial for a
specific type of application load:

 * single application system
 * one or few processes (e.g. one per core)
 * allocating all available memory
 * not initializing every page immediately
 * long running

I've run scientific clusters with this sort of load.  A long running job
sometimes failed many hours (weeks of CPU time) into a calculation.  They
weren't initializing all of their memory immediately, and they weren't
using calloc, so I put systems into overcommit 'never' mode.  These
clusters run diskless and have no swap.

However, with the current reserves, a user wishing to allocate as much
memory as possible to one process may be prevented from using, for
example, almost 2GB out of 32GB.

The effect is less, but still significant when a user starts a job with
one process per core.  I have repeatedly seen a set of processes
requesting the same amount of memory fail because one of them could not
allocate the amount of memory a user would expect to be able to allocate.
For example, Message Passing Interfce (MPI) processes, one per core.  And
it is similar for other parallel programming frameworks.

Changing this reserve code will make the overcommit never mode more useful
by allowing applications to allocate nearly all of the available memory.

Also, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current behavior
since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink to something
useless in the case where applications have grabbed all available memory.

Risks

* "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory"

  The downside of the first patch-- which creates a tunable user reserve
  that is only used in overcommit 'never' mode--is that an admin can set
  it so low that a user may not be able to kill their process, even if
  they already have a shell prompt.

  Of course, a user can get in the same predicament with the current 3%
  reserve--they just have to launch processes until 3% becomes negligible.

* root-cant-log-in problem

  The second patch, adding the tunable rootuser_reserve_pages, allows
  the admin to shoot themselves in the foot by setting it too small.  They
  can easily get the system into a state where root-can't-log-in.

  However, the new admin_reserve_kbytes will be safer than the current
  behavior since the hardcoded 3% of available memory reserve can shrink
  to something useless in the case where applications have grabbed all
  available memory.

Alternatives

 * Memory cgroups provide a more flexible way to limit application memory.

   Not everyone wants to set up cgroups or deal with their overhead.

 * We could create a fourth overcommit mode which provides smaller reserves.

   The size of useful reserves may be drastically different depending
   on the whether the system is embedded or enterprise.

 * Force users to initialize all of their memory or use calloc.

   Some users don't want/expect the system to overcommit when they malloc.
   Overcommit 'never' mode is for this scenario, and it should work well.

The new user and admin reserve tunables are simple to use, with low
overhead compared to cgroups.  The patches preserve current behavior where
3% of memory is less than 128MB, except that the admin reserve doesn't
shrink to an unusable size under pressure.  The code allows admins to tune
for embedded and enterprise usage.

FAQ

 * How is the root-cant-login problem addressed?
   What happens if admin_reserve_pages is set to 0?

   Root is free to shoot themselves in the foot by setting
   admin_reserve_kbytes too low.

   On x86_64, the minimum useful reserve is:
     8MB for overcommit 'guess'
   128MB for overcommit 'never'

   admin_reserve_pages defaults to min(3% free memory, 8MB)

   So, anyone switching to 'never' mode needs to adjust
   admin_reserve_pages.

 * How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve?

   A user or the admin needs enough memory to login and perform
   recovery operations, which includes, at a minimum:

   sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.)

   For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS)
   because we only need enough memory to handle what the recovery
   programs will typically use. On x86_64 this is about 8MB.

   For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ)
   and add the sum of their RSS. We use VSZ instead of RSS because mode
   forces us to ensure we can fulfill all of the requested memory allocations--
   even if the programs only use a fraction of what they ask for.
   On x86_64 this is about 128MB.

   When swap is enabled, reserves are useful even when they are as
   small as 10MB, regardless of overcommit mode.

   When both swap and overcommit are disabled, then the admin should
   tune the reserves higher to be absolutley safe. Over 230MB each
   was safest in my testing.

 * What happens if user_reserve_pages is set to 0?

   Note, this only affects overcomitt 'never' mode.

   Then a user will be able to allocate all available memory minus
   admin_reserve_kbytes.

   However, they will easily see a message such as:

   "bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory"

   And they won't be able to recover/kill their application.
   The admin should be able to recover the system if
   admin_reserve_kbytes is set appropriately.

 * What's the difference between overcommit 'guess' and 'never'?

   "Guess" allows an allocation if there are enough free + reclaimable
   pages. It has a hardcoded 3% of free pages reserved for root.

   "Never" allows an allocation if there is enough swap + a configurable
   percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. It has a hardcoded 3% of
   free pages reserved for root, like "Guess" mode. It also has a
   hardcoded 3% of the current process size reserved for additional
   applications.

 * Why is overcommit 'guess' not suitable even when an app eventually
   writes to every page? It takes free pages, file pages, available
   swap pages, reclaimable slab pages into consideration. In other words,
   these are all pages available, then why isn't overcommit suitable?

   Because it only looks at the present state of the system. It
   does not take into account the memory that other applications have
   malloced, but haven't initialized yet. It overcommits the system.

Test Summary

There was little change in behavior in the default overcommit 'guess'
mode with swap enabled before and after the patch. This was expected.

Systems run most predictably (i.e. no oom kills) in overcommit 'never'
mode with swap enabled. This also allowed the most memory to be allocated
to a user application.

Overcommit 'guess' mode without swap is a bad idea. It is easy to
crash the system. None of the other tested combinations crashed.
This matches my experience on the Roadrunner supercomputer.

Without the tunable user reserve, a system in overcommit 'never' mode
and without swap does not allow the admin to recover, although the
admin can.

With the new tunable reserves, a system in overcommit 'never' mode
and without swap can be configured to:

1. maximize user-allocatable memory, running close to the edge of
recoverability

2. maximize recoverability, sacrificing allocatable memory to
ensure that a user cannot take down a system

Test Description

Fedora 18 VM - 4 x86_64 cores, 5725MB RAM, 4GB Swap

System is booted into multiuser console mode, with unnecessary services
turned off. Caches were dropped before each test.

Hogs are user memtester processes that attempt to allocate all free memory
as reported by /proc/meminfo

In overcommit 'never' mode, memory_ratio=100

Test Results

3.9.0-rc1-mm1

Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery
----------   ----   ----   -------------   ----   -------------   --------------
guess        yes    1      5432/5432       no     yes             yes
guess        yes    4      5444/5444       1      yes             yes
guess        no     1      5302/5449       no     yes             yes
guess        no     4      -               crash  no              no

never        yes    1      5460/5460       1      yes             yes
never        yes    4      5460/5460       1      yes             yes
never        no     1      5218/5432       no     no              yes
never        no     4      5203/5448       no     no              yes

3.9.0-rc1-mm1-tunablereserves

User and Admin Recovery show their respective reserves, if applicable.

Overcommit | Swap | Hogs | MB Got/Wanted | OOMs | User Recovery | Admin Recovery
----------   ----   ----   -------------   ----   -------------   --------------
guess        yes    1      5419/5419       no     - yes           8MB yes
guess        yes    4      5436/5436       1      - yes           8MB yes
guess        no     1      5440/5440       *      - yes           8MB yes
guess        no     4      -               crash  - no            8MB no

* process would successfully mlock, then the oom killer would pick it

never        yes    1      5446/5446       no     10MB yes        20MB yes
never        yes    4      5456/5456       no     10MB yes        20MB yes
never        no     1      5387/5429       no     128MB no        8MB barely
never        no     1      5323/5428       no     226MB barely    8MB barely
never        no     1      5323/5428       no     226MB barely    8MB barely

never        no     1      5359/5448       no     10MB no         10MB barely

never        no     1      5323/5428       no     0MB no          10MB barely
never        no     1      5332/5428       no     0MB no          50MB yes
never        no     1      5293/5429       no     0MB no          90MB yes

never        no     1      5001/5427       no     230MB yes       338MB yes
never        no     4*     4998/5424       no     230MB yes       338MB yes

* more memtesters were launched, able to allocate approximately another 100MB

Future Work

 - Test larger memory systems.

 - Test an embedded image.

 - Test other architectures.

 - Time malloc microbenchmarks.

 - Would it be useful to be able to set overcommit policy for
   each memory cgroup?

 - Some lines are slightly above 80 chars.
   Perhaps define a macro to convert between pages and kb?
   Other places in the kernel do this.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make init_user_reserve() static]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Shewmaker &lt;agshew@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
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