[PATCH 5/5] pagemap: Wrote some userspace-oriented documentation for pagemap

From: Thomas Tuttle
Date: Thu Jun 05 2008 - 11:09:32 EST


This is just a quick bit of documentation for pagemap from a userspace
perspective, so users of the interface don't have to dig in to the
source code. It describes the three interfaces (pagemap, kpagecount,
kpageflags), and explains how they might be used.
From 4652ea84832c9ca23647c0f9e3d642bb6441e6f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Thomas Tuttle <ttuttle@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:50:04 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] Wrote userspace-oriented documentation for pagemap.

This is just a quick explanation of how pagemap works from a userspace
perspective, along with a quick example of what it can be used for.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Tuttle <ttuttle@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt | 77 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 77 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt b/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt
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+pagemap, from the userspace perspective
+---------------------------------------
+
+pagemap is a new (as of 2.6.25) set of interfaces in the kernel that allow
+userspace programs to examine the page tables and related information by
+reading files in /proc.
+
+There are three components to pagemap:
+
+ * /proc/pid/pagemap. This file lets a userspace process find out which
+ physical frame each virtual page is mapped to. It contains one 64-bit
+ value for each virtual page, containing the following data (from
+ fs/proc/task_mmu.c, above pagemap_read):
+
+ * Bits 0-55 page frame number (PFN) if present
+ * Bits 0-4 swap type if swapped
+ * Bits 5-55 swap offset if swapped
+ * Bits 55-60 page shift (page size = 1<<page shift)
+ * Bit 61 reserved for future use
+ * Bit 62 page swapped
+ * Bit 63 page present
+
+ If the page is not present but in swap, then the PFN contains an
+ encoding of the swap file number and the page's offset into the
+ swap. Unmapped pages return a null PFN. This allows determining
+ precisely which pages are mapped (or in swap) and comparing mapped
+ pages between processes.
+
+ Efficient users of this interface will use /proc/pid/maps to
+ determine which areas of memory are actually mapped and llseek to
+ skip over unmapped regions.
+
+ * /proc/kpagecount. This file contains a 64-bit count of the number of
+ times each page is mapped, indexed by PFN.
+
+ * /proc/kpageflags. This file contains a 64-bit set of flags for each
+ page, indexed by PFN.
+
+ The flags are (from fs/proc/proc_misc, above kpageflags_read):
+
+ 0. LOCKED
+ 1. ERROR
+ 2. REFERENCED
+ 3. UPTODATE
+ 4. DIRTY
+ 5. LRU
+ 6. ACTIVE
+ 7. SLAB
+ 8. WRITEBACK
+ 9. RECLAIM
+ 10. BUDDY
+
+Using pagemap to do something useful:
+
+The general procedure for using pagemap to find out about a process' memory
+usage goes like this:
+
+ 1. Read /proc/pid/maps to determine which parts of the memory space are
+ mapped to what.
+ 2. Select the maps you are interested in -- all of them, or a particular
+ library, or the stack or the heap, etc.
+ 3. Open /proc/pid/pagemap and seek to the pages you would like to examine.
+ 4. Read a u64 for each page from pagemap.
+ 5. Open /proc/kpagecount and/or /proc/kpageflags. For each PFN you just
+ read, seek to that entry in the file, and read the data you want.
+
+For example, to find the "unique set size" (USS), which is the amount of
+memory that a process is using that is not shared with any other process,
+you can go through every map in the process, find the PFNs, look those up
+in kpagecount, and tally up the number of pages that are only referenced
+once.
+
+Other notes:
+
+Reading from any of the files will return -EINVAL if you are not starting
+the read on an 8-byte boundary (e.g., if you seeked an odd number of bytes
+into the file), or if the size of the read is not a multiple of 8 bytes.
--
1.5.3.6