From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from psmtp.com (na3sys010amx102.postini.com [74.125.245.102]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BBFF56B002B for ; Thu, 8 Nov 2012 19:52:42 -0500 (EST) Received: by mail-qc0-f201.google.com with SMTP id a6so404857qch.2 for ; Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:52:41 -0800 (PST) From: Sonny Rao Subject: [PATCHv2] mm: Fix calculation of dirtyable memory Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 16:52:33 -0800 Message-Id: <1352422353-11229-1-git-send-email-sonnyrao@chromium.org> In-Reply-To: References: Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Cc: Fengguang Wu , Peter Zijlstra , Andrew Morton , Michal Hocko , linux-mm@kvack.org, Mandeep Singh Baines , Johannes Weiner , Olof Johansson , Will Drewry , Kees Cook , Aaron Durbin , Sonny Rao , Puneet Kumar The system uses global_dirtyable_memory() to calculate number of dirtyable pages/pages that can be allocated to the page cache. A bug causes an underflow thus making the page count look like a big unsigned number. This in turn confuses the dirty writeback throttling to aggressively write back pages as they become dirty (usually 1 page at a time). Fix is to ensure there is no underflow while doing the math. Signed-off-by: Sonny Rao Signed-off-by: Puneet Kumar --- v2: added apkm's suggestion to make the highmem calculation better mm/page-writeback.c | 17 +++++++++++++++-- 1 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/mm/page-writeback.c b/mm/page-writeback.c index 830893b..ce62442 100644 --- a/mm/page-writeback.c +++ b/mm/page-writeback.c @@ -201,6 +201,18 @@ static unsigned long highmem_dirtyable_memory(unsigned long total) zone_reclaimable_pages(z) - z->dirty_balance_reserve; } /* + * Unreclaimable memory (kernel memory or anonymous memory + * without swap) can bring down the dirtyable pages below + * the zone's dirty balance reserve and the above calculation + * will underflow. However we still want to add in nodes + * which are below threshold (negative values) to get a more + * accurate calculation but make sure that the total never + * underflows. + */ + if ((long)x < 0) + x = 0; + + /* * Make sure that the number of highmem pages is never larger * than the number of the total dirtyable memory. This can only * occur in very strange VM situations but we want to make sure @@ -222,8 +234,9 @@ static unsigned long global_dirtyable_memory(void) { unsigned long x; - x = global_page_state(NR_FREE_PAGES) + global_reclaimable_pages() - - dirty_balance_reserve; + x = global_page_state(NR_FREE_PAGES) + global_reclaimable_pages(); + if (x >= dirty_balance_reserve) + x -= dirty_balance_reserve; if (!vm_highmem_is_dirtyable) x -= highmem_dirtyable_memory(x); -- 1.7.7.3 -- 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