From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on archive.lwn.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.0 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.1 Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by archive.lwn.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7DF047D089 for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2018 19:58:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1726976AbeKFFTq (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Nov 2018 00:19:46 -0500 Received: from mx0a-001b2d01.pphosted.com ([148.163.156.1]:35582 "EHLO mx0a-001b2d01.pphosted.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1725735AbeKFFTq (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Nov 2018 00:19:46 -0500 Received: from pps.filterd (m0098396.ppops.net [127.0.0.1]) by mx0a-001b2d01.pphosted.com (8.16.0.22/8.16.0.22) with SMTP id wA5JrekB025193 for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2018 14:58:27 -0500 Received: from e06smtp07.uk.ibm.com (e06smtp07.uk.ibm.com [195.75.94.103]) by mx0a-001b2d01.pphosted.com with ESMTP id 2njugqahw1-1 (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT) for ; Mon, 05 Nov 2018 14:58:27 -0500 Received: from localhost by e06smtp07.uk.ibm.com with IBM ESMTP SMTP Gateway: Authorized Use Only! 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Violators will be prosecuted; (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256/256) Mon, 5 Nov 2018 19:58:21 -0000 Received: from d06av22.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com (d06av22.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com [9.149.105.58]) by b06cxnps4075.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com (8.14.9/8.14.9/NCO v10.0) with ESMTP id wA5JwKBw8257942 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=FAIL); Mon, 5 Nov 2018 19:58:20 GMT Received: from d06av22.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by IMSVA (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92D5D4C046; Mon, 5 Nov 2018 19:58:20 +0000 (GMT) Received: from d06av22.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by IMSVA (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17A514C040; Mon, 5 Nov 2018 19:58:19 +0000 (GMT) Received: from rapoport-lnx (unknown [9.148.207.135]) by d06av22.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com (Postfix) with ESMTPS; Mon, 5 Nov 2018 19:58:18 +0000 (GMT) Received: by rapoport-lnx (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Mon, 05 Nov 2018 21:58:18 +0200 From: Mike Rapoport To: Jonathan Corbet Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Mike Rapoport , Randy Dunlap Subject: [PATCH] docs/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst: grammar fixups Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2018 21:58:15 +0200 X-Mailer: git-send-email 2.7.4 X-TM-AS-GCONF: 00 x-cbid: 18110519-0028-0000-0000-0000031352EF X-IBM-AV-DETECTION: SAVI=unused REMOTE=unused XFE=unused x-cbparentid: 18110519-0029-0000-0000-000023CF9774 Message-Id: <1541447895-14996-1-git-send-email-rppt@linux.ibm.com> X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10434:,, definitions=2018-11-05_11:,, signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=outbound_notspam policy=outbound score=0 priorityscore=1501 malwarescore=0 suspectscore=2 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 spamscore=0 clxscore=1015 lowpriorityscore=0 mlxscore=0 impostorscore=0 mlxlogscore=999 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx scancount=1 engine=8.0.1-1807170000 definitions=main-1811050177 Sender: linux-doc-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org From: Mike Rapoport Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport Cc: Randy Dunlap --- There was a couple of grammar fixes Randy suggested a while ago, but it seems I've never sent them out. Documentation/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst | 39 ++++++++++++++++--------------- 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst index 291699c..ab7a0f9 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/concepts.rst @@ -4,13 +4,13 @@ Concepts overview ================= -The memory management in Linux is complex system that evolved over the -years and included more and more functionality to support variety of +The memory management in Linux is a complex system that evolved over the +years and included more and more functionality to support a variety of systems from MMU-less microcontrollers to supercomputers. The memory -management for systems without MMU is called ``nommu`` and it +management for systems without an MMU is called ``nommu`` and it definitely deserves a dedicated document, which hopefully will be eventually written. Yet, although some of the concepts are the same, -here we assume that MMU is available and CPU can translate a virtual +here we assume that an MMU is available and a CPU can translate a virtual address to a physical address. .. contents:: :local: @@ -21,10 +21,10 @@ Virtual Memory Primer The physical memory in a computer system is a limited resource and even for systems that support memory hotplug there is a hard limit on the amount of memory that can be installed. The physical memory is not -necessary contiguous, it might be accessible as a set of distinct +necessary contiguous; it might be accessible as a set of distinct address ranges. Besides, different CPU architectures, and even -different implementations of the same architecture have different view -how these address ranges defined. +different implementations of the same architecture have different views +of how these address ranges defined. All this makes dealing directly with physical memory quite complex and to avoid this complexity a concept of virtual memory was developed. @@ -48,8 +48,9 @@ appropriate kernel configuration option. Each physical memory page can be mapped as one or more virtual pages. These mappings are described by page tables that allow -translation from virtual address used by programs to real address in -the physical memory. The page tables organized hierarchically. +translation from a virtual address used by programs to the real +address in the physical memory. The page tables are organized +hierarchically. The tables at the lowest level of the hierarchy contain physical addresses of actual pages used by the software. The tables at higher @@ -121,8 +122,8 @@ Nodes Many multi-processor machines are NUMA - Non-Uniform Memory Access - systems. In such systems the memory is arranged into banks that have different access latency depending on the "distance" from the -processor. Each bank is referred as `node` and for each node Linux -constructs an independent memory management subsystem. A node has it's +processor. Each bank is referred as a `node` and for each node Linux +constructs an independent memory management subsystem. A node has its own set of zones, lists of free and used pages and various statistics counters. You can find more details about NUMA in :ref:`Documentation/vm/numa.rst ` and in @@ -149,7 +150,7 @@ for program's stack and heap or by explicit calls to mmap(2) system call. Usually, the anonymous mappings only define virtual memory areas that the program is allowed to access. The read accesses will result in creation of a page table entry that references a special physical -page filled with zeroes. When the program performs a write, regular +page filled with zeroes. When the program performs a write, a regular physical page will be allocated to hold the written data. The page will be marked dirty and if the kernel will decide to repurpose it, the dirty page will be swapped out. @@ -181,8 +182,8 @@ pressure. The process of freeing the reclaimable physical memory pages and repurposing them is called (surprise!) `reclaim`. Linux can reclaim pages either asynchronously or synchronously, depending on the state -of the system. When system is not loaded, most of the memory is free -and allocation request will be satisfied immediately from the free +of the system. When the system is not loaded, most of the memory is free +and allocation requests will be satisfied immediately from the free pages supply. As the load increases, the amount of the free pages goes down and when it reaches a certain threshold (high watermark), an allocation request will awaken the ``kswapd`` daemon. It will @@ -190,7 +191,7 @@ asynchronously scan memory pages and either just free them if the data they contain is available elsewhere, or evict to the backing storage device (remember those dirty pages?). As memory usage increases even more and reaches another threshold - min watermark - an allocation -will trigger the `direct reclaim`. In this case allocation is stalled +will trigger `direct reclaim`. In this case allocation is stalled until enough memory pages are reclaimed to satisfy the request. Compaction @@ -200,7 +201,7 @@ As the system runs, tasks allocate and free the memory and it becomes fragmented. Although with virtual memory it is possible to present scattered physical pages as virtually contiguous range, sometimes it is necessary to allocate large physically contiguous memory areas. Such -need may arise, for instance, when a device driver requires large +need may arise, for instance, when a device driver requires a large buffer for DMA, or when THP allocates a huge page. Memory `compaction` addresses the fragmentation issue. This mechanism moves occupied pages from the lower part of a memory zone to free pages in the upper part @@ -208,13 +209,13 @@ of the zone. When a compaction scan is finished free pages are grouped together at the beginning of the zone and allocations of large physically contiguous areas become possible. -Like reclaim, the compaction may happen asynchronously in ``kcompactd`` -daemon or synchronously as a result of memory allocation request. +Like reclaim, the compaction may happen asynchronously in the ``kcompactd`` +daemon or synchronously as a result of a memory allocation request. OOM killer ========== -It may happen, that on a loaded machine memory will be exhausted. When +It may happen that on a loaded machine memory will be exhausted. When the kernel detects that the system runs out of memory (OOM) it invokes `OOM killer`. Its mission is simple: all it has to do is to select a task to sacrifice for the sake of the overall system health. The -- 2.7.4