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From: ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com
To: linux-mm@kvack.org
Cc: axboe@kernel.dk, Christian Ehrhardt <ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: [PATCH 2/2] documentation: update how page-cluster affects swap I/O
Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 13:58:29 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1336996709-8304-3-git-send-email-ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1336996709-8304-1-git-send-email-ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

From: Christian Ehrhardt <ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

Fix of the documentation of /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster to match the behavior of
the code and add some comments about what the tunable will change in that
behavior.

Signed-off-by: Christian Ehrhardt <ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
---
 Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt |   12 ++++++++++--
 1 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 96f0ee8..4d87dc0 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -574,16 +574,24 @@ of physical RAM.  See above.
 
 page-cluster
 
-page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in
-a single attempt.  The swap I/O size.
+page-cluster controls the number of pages up to which consecutive pages (if
+available) are read in from swap in a single attempt. This is the swap
+counterpart to page cache readahead.
+The mentioned consecutivity is not in terms of virtual/physical addresses,
+but consecutive on swap space - that means they were swapped out together.
 
 It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
 it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
+Zero disables swap readahead completely.
 
 The default value is three (eight pages at a time).  There may be some
 small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
 swap-intensive.
 
+Lower values mean lower latencies for initial faults, but at the same time
+extra faults and I/O delays for following faults if they would have been part of
+that consecutive pages readahead would have brought in.
+
 =============================================================
 
 panic_on_oom
-- 
1.7.0.4

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2012-05-14 11:58 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-05-14 11:58 [PATCH 0/2] swap: improve swap I/O rate ehrhardt
2012-05-14 11:58 ` [PATCH 1/2] swap: allow swap readahead to be merged ehrhardt
2012-05-15  4:38   ` Minchan Kim
2012-05-15 17:43   ` Rik van Riel
2012-05-14 11:58 ` ehrhardt [this message]
2012-05-15  4:48   ` [PATCH 2/2] documentation: update how page-cluster affects swap I/O Minchan Kim
2012-05-21  7:24     ` Christian Ehrhardt
2012-05-15  4:59 ` [PATCH 0/2] swap: improve swap I/O rate Minchan Kim
2012-05-21  7:51   ` Christian Ehrhardt
2012-05-21  8:46     ` Minchan Kim
2012-05-15 18:24 ` Jens Axboe
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2012-05-21  8:09 [PATCH 0/2] swap: improve swap I/O rate - V2 ehrhardt
2012-05-21  8:09 ` [PATCH 2/2] documentation: update how page-cluster affects swap I/O ehrhardt
2012-05-21  8:48   ` Minchan Kim
2012-06-04  8:33 [PATCH 0/2] swap: improve swap I/O rate - V2 ehrhardt
2012-06-04  8:33 ` [PATCH 2/2] documentation: update how page-cluster affects swap I/O ehrhardt

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