Re: [patch 2/2] mm: add dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytessysctls

From: David Rientjes
Date: Mon Nov 24 2008 - 20:03:03 EST


On Mon, 24 Nov 2008, Andrew Morton wrote:

> > @@ -365,23 +429,29 @@ void
> > get_dirty_limits(unsigned long *pbackground, unsigned long *pdirty,
> > unsigned long *pbdi_dirty, struct backing_dev_info *bdi)
> > {
> > - int background_ratio; /* Percentages */
> > - int dirty_ratio;
> > unsigned long background;
> > unsigned long dirty;
> > unsigned long available_memory = determine_dirtyable_memory();
> > struct task_struct *tsk;
> >
> > - dirty_ratio = vm_dirty_ratio;
> > - if (dirty_ratio < 5)
> > - dirty_ratio = 5;
> > + if (vm_dirty_bytes)
> > + dirty = (vm_dirty_bytes + PAGE_SIZE) / PAGE_SIZE;
>
> It would be conventional to use DIV_ROUND_UP() here.
>

Ah, indeed. I forgot about those.

> > + else {
> > + int dirty_ratio;
>
> hm, I wonder why vm_dirty_ratio has a signed type.
>

vm_dirty_ratio only has an acceptable range between 0 and 100 since it
uses proc_dointvec_minmax(), so it's not really important. It could
definitely be changed, however.

There's a limitation in the sysctl interface where we don't handle
unsigned ints very well (ignore the reference to unsigned int in the
proc_dointvec comment). We lack an unsigned int handler, so all
proc_dointvec() users are implicitly signed.

For example, if a sysctl's data object were declared with a type specifier
of unsigned int and it uses proc_dointvec() as the handler, it would have
a x86_64 max of 2147483648, that of a signed integer.

> > - background_ratio = dirty_background_ratio;
> > - if (background_ratio >= dirty_ratio)
> > - background_ratio = dirty_ratio / 2;
> > + dirty_ratio = vm_dirty_ratio;
> > + if (dirty_ratio < 5)
> > + dirty_ratio = 5;
> > + dirty = (dirty_ratio * available_memory) / 100;
> > + }
> > +
> > + if (dirty_background_bytes)
> > + background = (dirty_background_bytes + PAGE_SIZE) / PAGE_SIZE;
>
> DIV_ROUND_UP()?
>
> > + else
> > + background = (dirty_background_ratio * available_memory) / 100;
> >
> > - background = (background_ratio * available_memory) / 100;
> > - dirty = (dirty_ratio * available_memory) / 100;
> > + if (background >= dirty)
> > + background = dirty / 2;
> > tsk = current;
> > if (tsk->flags & PF_LESS_THROTTLE || rt_task(tsk)) {
> > background += background / 4;
>
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