[PATCH v7 7/8] selftest/cgroup: fix zswap attempt_writeback() on 64K pagesize system

Li Wang
2026-04-24T04:02:48Z

In attempt_writeback(), a memsize of 4M only covers 64 pages on 64K
page size systems. When memory.reclaim is called, the kernel prefers
reclaiming clean file pages (binary, libc, linker, etc.) over swapping
anonymous pages. With only 64 pages of anonymous memory, the reclaim
target can be largely or entirely satisfied by dropping file pages,
resulting in very few or zero anonymous pages being pushed into zswap.

This causes zswap_usage to be extremely small or zero, making
zswap_usage/4 insufficient to create meaningful writeback pressure.
The test then fails because no writeback is triggered.

On 4K page size systems this is not an issue because 4M covers 1024
pages, and file pages are a small fraction of the reclaim target.

Fix this by:
- Always allocating 1024 pages regardless of page size. This ensures
enough anonymous pages to reliably populate zswap and trigger
writeback, while keeping the original 4M allocation on 4K systems.
- Setting zswap.max to zswap_usage/4 instead of zswap_usage/2 to
create stronger writeback pressure, ensuring reclaim reliably
triggers writeback even on large page size systems.

=== Error Log ===
# uname -rm
6.12.0-211.el10.ppc64le ppc64le

# getconf PAGESIZE
65536

# ./test_zswap
TAP version 13
1..7
ok 1 test_zswap_usage
ok 2 test_swapin_nozswap
ok 3 test_zswapin
not ok 4 test_zswap_writeback_enabled
...

Signed-off-by: Li Wang <li.wang@linux.dev>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Michal Koutný <mkoutny@suse.com>
Cc: Muchun Song <muchun.song@linux.dev>
Cc: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Acked-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
---
tools/testing/selftests/cgroup/test_zswap.c | 8 ++++----
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/cgroup/test_zswap.c b/tools/testing/selftests/cgroup/test_zswap.c
index 8f0478923bd..5fe0cffb557 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/cgroup/test_zswap.c
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/cgroup/test_zswap.c
@@ -268,14 +268,14 @@ static int test_zswapin(const char *root)
This will move it into zswap.
* 3. Save current zswap usage.
* 4. Move the memory allocated in step 1 back in from zswap.
- * 5. Set zswap.max to half the amount that was recorded in step 3.
+ * 5. Set zswap.max to 1/4 of the amount that was recorded in step 3.
* 6. Attempt to reclaim memory equal to the amount that was allocated,
this will either trigger writeback if it's enabled, or reclamation
will fail if writeback is disabled as there isn't enough zswap space.
*/
static int attempt_writeback(const char *cgroup, void *arg)
{
- size_t memsize = MB(4);
+ size_t memsize = page_size * 1024;
char buf[page_size];
long zswap_usage;
bool wb_enabled = *(bool *) arg;
@@ -313,12 +313,12 @@ static int attempt_writeback(const char *cgroup, void *arg)
}
}

- if (cg_write_numeric(cgroup, "memory.zswap.max", zswap_usage/2))
+ if (cg_write_numeric(cgroup, "memory.zswap.max", zswap_usage/4))
goto out;

/*
* If writeback is enabled, trying to reclaim memory now will trigger a
- * writeback as zswap.max is half of what was needed when reclaim ran the first time.
+ * writeback as zswap.max is 1/4 of what was needed when reclaim ran the first time.
* If writeback is disabled, memory reclaim will fail as zswap is limited and
* it can't writeback to swap.
*/
--
2.53.0