From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail138.messagelabs.com (mail138.messagelabs.com [216.82.249.35]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C3E2B6B007B for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:46:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] After swapout/swapin private dirty mappings are reported clean in smaps From: Matt Mackall In-Reply-To: References: <20100915134724.C9EE.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com> <201009151034.22497.knikanth@suse.de> <20100915141710.C9F7.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com> <201009151201.11359.knikanth@suse.de> <20100915140911.GC4383@balbir.in.ibm.com> <1284561982.21906.280.camel@calx> <1284571473.21906.428.camel@calx> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:46:09 -0500 Message-ID: <1284579969.21906.451.camel@calx> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Hugh Dickins Cc: Richard Guenther , Balbir Singh , Nikanth Karthikesan , KOSAKI Motohiro , linux-mm@kvack.org, Andrew Morton , Michael Matz , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 12:18 -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote: > On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Matt Mackall wrote: > > > But that's my point: the consistency problem is NOT in smaps. The page > > is NOT marked dirty, ergo smaps doesn't report it as dirty. Whether or > > not there is MORE information smaps could be reporting is irrelevant, > > the information it IS reporting is consistent with the underlying VM > > data. If there's an inconsistency about what it means to be clean, it's > > either in the VM or in your head. > > > > And I frankly think it's in the VM. > > I don't believe there's any problem in the VM here, we'd be having > SIGSEGVs all over if there were. Of course it works. It's just not as orthogonal (aka consistent) as it could be in this case: it's not actually reflecting any of the usual meanings of dirtiness here. > The problem is that /proc/pid/smaps exports a simplified view of the > VM, and Richard and Nikanth were hoping that it gave them some info > which it has never pretended to give them, > > It happens to use a pte_dirty(ptent) test: you could argue that that > should be pte_dirty(ptent) || PageDirty(page) (which would then "fix > the issue" which Richard sees with swapoff/swapon), That might be interesting. Are there any other notable cases where pte_dirty() differs from PageDirty()? > or you could argue > that it should be pte_dirty(ptent) || PageDirty(page) || > PageSwapCache(page) (which would then note clean copies of swap cache > as dirty in the sense which Richard and Nikanth are interested in). > > But after these years, we should probably assume that most users of > /proc/pid/smaps are used to the existing pte_dirty(ptent) test, and > would be troubled by a departure from it. Dunno, my smem tool[1] is probably also expecting too much here and I should know better! > > In any case, I don't think Nikanth's fix is the right fix, as it > > basically says "you can't trust any of this". Either swap should return > > the pages to their pre-swap dirty state in the VM, or we should add > > another field here: > > > > Weird_Anon_Page_You_Should_Pretend_Is_Private_Dirty: 8 kB > > I think that the most widely useful but simple extension of > /proc/pid/smaps, that would give them the info they want, would indeed > be to counts ptes pointing to PageAnon pages and report that total on > an additional line (say, just before "Swap:"); but there's no need for > the derogatory name you propose there, "Anon:" would suit fine! Yes, that wasn't a serious suggestion. [1] http://www.selenic.com/smem/ -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org