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authorNishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>2007-12-17 16:20:12 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org>2007-12-17 19:28:17 -0800
commitd1c3fb1f8f29c41b0d098d7cfb3c32939043631f (patch)
treeb91983662da7ec4c28ac0788e835c2d51eea20e1 /kernel
parent7a3f595cc8298df14a7c71b0d876bafd8e9e1cbf (diff)
downloadlinux-d1c3fb1f8f29c41b0d098d7cfb3c32939043631f.tar.bz2
hugetlb: introduce nr_overcommit_hugepages sysctl
hugetlb: introduce nr_overcommit_hugepages sysctl While examining the code to support /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_dynamic_pool, I became convinced that having a boolean sysctl was insufficient: 1) To support per-node control of hugepages, I have previously submitted patches to add a sysfs attribute related to nr_hugepages. However, with a boolean global value and per-mount quota enforcement constraining the dynamic pool, adding corresponding control of the dynamic pool on a per-node basis seems inconsistent to me. 2) Administration of the hugetlb dynamic pool with multiple hugetlbfs mount points is, arguably, more arduous than it needs to be. Each quota would need to be set separately, and the sum would need to be monitored. To ease the administration, and to help make the way for per-node control of the static & dynamic hugepage pool, I added a separate sysctl, nr_overcommit_hugepages. This value serves as a high watermark for the overall hugepage pool, while nr_hugepages serves as a low watermark. The boolean sysctl can then be removed, as the condition nr_overcommit_hugepages > 0 indicates the same administrative setting as hugetlb_dynamic_pool == 1 Quotas still serve as local enforcement of the size of the pool on a per-mount basis. A few caveats: 1) There is a race whereby the global surplus huge page counter is incremented before a hugepage has allocated. Another process could then try grow the pool, and fail to convert a surplus huge page to a normal huge page and instead allocate a fresh huge page. I believe this is benign, as no memory is leaked (the actual pages are still tracked correctly) and the counters won't go out of sync. 2) Shrinking the static pool while a surplus is in effect will allow the number of surplus huge pages to exceed the overcommit value. As long as this condition holds, however, no more surplus huge pages will be allowed on the system until one of the two sysctls are increased sufficiently, or the surplus huge pages go out of use and are freed. Successfully tested on x86_64 with the current libhugetlbfs snapshot, modified to use the new sysctl. Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com> Acked-by: Adam Litke <agl@us.ibm.com> Cc: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Cc: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'kernel')
-rw-r--r--kernel/sysctl.c8
1 files changed, 8 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
index 8ac51714b08c..b85a1282605d 100644
--- a/kernel/sysctl.c
+++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
@@ -912,6 +912,14 @@ static struct ctl_table vm_table[] = {
.mode = 0644,
.proc_handler = &proc_dointvec,
},
+ {
+ .ctl_name = CTL_UNNUMBERED,
+ .procname = "nr_overcommit_hugepages",
+ .data = &nr_overcommit_huge_pages,
+ .maxlen = sizeof(nr_overcommit_huge_pages),
+ .mode = 0644,
+ .proc_handler = &proc_doulongvec_minmax,
+ },
#endif
{
.ctl_name = VM_LOWMEM_RESERVE_RATIO,