Re: [PATCH v3] zram: add num_discards for discarded pages stat

Minchan Kim
2014-08-25T00:35:32Z

Hello Chao,

On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 04:21:01PM +0800, Chao Yu wrote:
> Since we have supported handling discard request in this commit
> f4659d8e620d08bd1a84a8aec5d2f5294a242764 (zram: support REQ_DISCARD), zram got
> one more chance to free unused memory whenever received discard request. But
> without stating for discard request, there is no method for user to know whether
> discard request has been handled by zram or how many blocks were discarded by
> zram when user wants to know the effect of discard.

My concern is that how much we are able to know the effect of discard
exactly with your patch.

The issue I can think of is zram-swap discard.
Now, zram handles notification from VM to free duplicated copy between
VM-owned memory and zRAM-owned's one so discarding for zram-swap might
be pointless overhead but your stat indicates lots of free page discarded
without real freeing so that user might think "We should keep enable
swap discard for zRAM because the stat indicates it's really good".

In summary, wouldn't it better to have two?

num_discards,
num_failed_discards?

For it, we should modify zram_free_page has return value.
What do other guys think?

>
> In this patch, we add num_discards to stat discarded pages, and export it to
> sysfs for users.
>
> * From v1
> * Update zram document to show num_discards in statistics list.
>
> * From v2
> * Update description of this patch with clear goal.
>
> Signed-off-by: Chao Yu <chao2.yu@samsung.com>
> ---
> Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-block-zram | 10 ++++++++++
> Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt | 1 +
> drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c | 3 +++
> drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.h | 1 +
> 4 files changed, 15 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-block-zram b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-block-zram
> index 70ec992..fa8936e 100644
> --- a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-block-zram
> +++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-block-zram
> @@ -57,6 +57,16 @@ Description:
> The failed_writes file is read-only and specifies the number of
> failed writes happened on this device.
>
> +
> +What: /sys/block/zram<id>/num_discards
> +Date: August 2014
> +Contact: Chao Yu <chao2.yu@samsung.com>
> +Description:
> + The num_discards file is read-only and specifies the number of
> + physical blocks which are discarded by this device. These blocks
> + are included in discard request which is sended by filesystem as
> + the blocks are no longer used.
> +
> What: /sys/block/zram<id>/max_comp_streams
> Date: February 2014
> Contact: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
> diff --git a/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt b/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt
> index 0595c3f..e50e18b 100644
> --- a/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt
> @@ -89,6 +89,7 @@ size of the disk when not in use so a huge zram is wasteful.
> num_writes
> failed_reads
> failed_writes
> + num_discards
> invalid_io
> notify_free
> zero_pages
> diff --git a/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c b/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c
> index d00831c..904e7a5 100644
> --- a/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c
> +++ b/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c
> @@ -606,6 +606,7 @@ static void zram_bio_discard(struct zram *zram, u32 index,
> bit_spin_lock(ZRAM_ACCESS, &meta->table[index].value);
> zram_free_page(zram, index);
> bit_spin_unlock(ZRAM_ACCESS, &meta->table[index].value);
> + atomic64_inc(&zram->stats.num_discards);
> index++;
> n -= PAGE_SIZE;
> }
> @@ -866,6 +867,7 @@ ZRAM_ATTR_RO(num_reads);
> ZRAM_ATTR_RO(num_writes);
> ZRAM_ATTR_RO(failed_reads);
> ZRAM_ATTR_RO(failed_writes);
> +ZRAM_ATTR_RO(num_discards);
> ZRAM_ATTR_RO(invalid_io);
> ZRAM_ATTR_RO(notify_free);
> ZRAM_ATTR_RO(zero_pages);
> @@ -879,6 +881,7 @@ static struct attribute *zram_disk_attrs[] = {
> &dev_attr_num_writes.attr,
> &dev_attr_failed_reads.attr,
> &dev_attr_failed_writes.attr,
> + &dev_attr_num_discards.attr,
> &dev_attr_invalid_io.attr,
> &dev_attr_notify_free.attr,
> &dev_attr_zero_pages.attr,
> diff --git a/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.h b/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.h
> index e0f725c..2994aaf 100644
> --- a/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.h
> +++ b/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.h
> @@ -86,6 +86,7 @@ struct zram_stats {
> atomic64_t num_writes; /* --do-- */
> atomic64_t failed_reads; /* can happen when memory is too low */
> atomic64_t failed_writes; /* can happen when memory is too low */
> + atomic64_t num_discards; /* no. of discarded pages */
> atomic64_t invalid_io; /* non-page-aligned I/O requests */
> atomic64_t notify_free; /* no. of swap slot free notifications */
> atomic64_t zero_pages; /* no. of zero filled pages */
> --
> 2.0.1.474.g72c7794
>
>
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--
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim