[PATCH 00/16] xswap: extendable swap device backed by zswap
From: Baoquan He
Date: Thu Aug 27 2026 - 05:45:26 EST
xswap is an extendable swap device with no backing storage. Swapped-out
pages live only in zswap, so the device wastes no disk space and its
size is independent of any physical device.
xswap decouples PTE swap entries from physical backing storage. The
cluster_info array is backed by a sparse vmalloc (VM_SPARSE) area that is
grown and shrunk on demand:
- Grow: when cluster allocation runs out of free clusters and the device
is below its ceiling, more physical pages are mapped into the VM_SPARSE
area and their clusters are added to the free list.
- Shrink: when contiguous free clusters accumulate at the tail of the
mapped range (tracked in O(1) via nr_free_tail), they are unmapped and
the backing pages freed. Shrink is deferred to a workqueue to avoid
lock recursion.
A per-device ceiling (nr_clusters) bounds growth and is adjustable at
runtime via debugfs.
Interface:
/sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create write "<percent> [<prio>]" to
create a device; percent is a
percent of RAM (0 for the default),
prio is an optional swap priority
(default DEF_SWAP_PRIO)
/sys/kernel/mm/xswap/destroy write a swap type to tear down
a device
/sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type<N>_cluster_limit
read/write the per-device
cluster ceiling
Since xswap has no backing, swapped-out pages are stored compressed in
zswap: physical writeout is skipped, and zswap writeback is disabled when
every swapfile in the system is an xswap device. xswap requires zswap, so
device creation is refused when zswap is unavailable.
Naming:
======
I'm going with "xswap" (the "x" for extendable/extension) rather than "vswap".
Chris suggested this name, and this aligns with the "VFS-like swap layers"
direction Chris Li described in the first swap abstraction LPC talk
(co-hosted with Yosry) the swap ops and the xswap extension interfaces in
this series are moving toward exactly that. I don't have a strong preference
between xswap and vswap, so if reviewers object to the name, please comment.
Note:
=====
This patchset only build the base. On top of this, the subsequent core code
implementation of xswap writeback, rmap etc can be done more easily. E.g, we
only need add one field in struct swap_cluster_info to let xs_table point to
physical swap entry, or zswap entry etc. On top of this patchset, no need to
stir core data structure too much or introduce extra data structure.
--- a/mm/swap.h
+++ b/mm/swap.h
@@ -57,6 +57,9 @@ struct swap_cluster_info {
u8 order;
atomic_long_t __rcu *table; /* Swap table entries, see mm/swap_table.h */
unsigned int *extend_table; /* For large swap count, protected by ci->lock */
+#ifdef CONFIG_XSWAP
+ unsigned long *xs_table;
+#endif
Testing (taken on qemu kvm guest with 8G memory):
=========
1. enable zswap and create/destroy xswap device
~# echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create
-bash: echo: write error: Operation not supported
~# echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled
~# echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create
~# swapon
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
xswap0 xswap 2.3G 0B -1
~# echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/destroy
~# swapon
2. create xswap device and tune the zswap size
~# echo "50 10" > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create
~# echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create
~# swapon
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
xswap0 xswap 3.9G 0B 10
xswap1 xswap 2.3G 0B -1
~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type0_cluster_limit
1990
~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type1_cluster_limit
1194
~# echo 2048 > /sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type0_cluster_limit
~# echo 2048 > /sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type1_cluster_limit
~# swapon
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
xswap0 xswap 4G 0B 10
xswap1 xswap 4G 0B -1
3. under heavy memory pressure tune swap size or destroy xswap device
~# stress-ng --vm 1 --vm-bytes 8G --vm-keep --timeout 120s &
~# echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type0_cluster_limit
~# swapon
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
xswap0 xswap 2G 2.6G 10
xswap1 xswap 4G 182M -1
~# echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/debug/xswap/type1_cluster_limit
~# swapon
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
xswap0 xswap 2G 1.4G 10
xswap1 xswap 2G 315.4M -1
~# echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/destroy
~# swapon
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
xswap1 xswap 2G 1.1G -1
I tried create/destroy and grow/shrink xswap device under heavy
memory pressure, all passed.
Changelog
=========
RFC v3 -> v1
- Add patch 16 to support setting xswap device priority at creation.
The create sysfs interface (/sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create) previously
hardcoded every new device's priority to DEF_SWAP_PRIO, it now
accepts an optional priority:
echo "<percent> [<prio>]" > /sys/kernel/mm/xswap/create
- Bug fix: xswap_lock init ordering. mutex_init(&si->xswap_lock) was called
after xswap_map_clusters() (which locks it), i.e. locking an uninitialized
mutex. Init now before the first xswap_map_clusters() call. Thanks to Klara.
- Bug fix: Fixes a compile error in !CONFIG_XSWAP builds. xswap_debugfs_root
is declared inside CONFIG_XSWAP ifdeffery scope, so the ungarded use
caused error when CONFIG_XSWAP is off.
RFC v2-> RFC v3:
- Replace the "header-only swap file + swapon" creation hack with a
proper file-less device created and destroyed via sysfs
(/sys/kernel/mm/xswap/{create,destroy}). This required the
__swapoff() refactor and the free_swap_cluster_info() signature
change (patches 4, 6, 14).
- Require zswap: refuse to create an xswap device when zswap is
unavailable (patch 15).
- Split the unrelated zswap -ENOENT fix out of the series into a
standalone patch (patch 1).
- Fix nr_free_tail over-counting on concurrent grow, shrink leaking
detached clusters on early bail-out, a re-init race on cluster
spinlocks in xswap_map_clusters(), the nr_clusters_mapped update
ordering, and swapoff accessing the shrinker-unmapped cluster tail.
- Minor cleanups (checkpatch, /proc/swaps alignment, commit messages).
RFC v1-> RFC v2:
- Added __GFP_HIGH | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC to alloc_page() and kmalloc_array()
in the grow path, plus memalloc_noreclaim_save/restore() wrapping,
to prevent the grow path from consuming emergency memory reserves
or recursing into swap under PF_MEMALLOC. This is folded into patch 3.
This was pointed out by Nhat.
- Folded the mutex serialization fix into the cluster grow patch (patch
3). This is suggested by Nhat.
- Fixed coding style issues: corrected indentation of declarations in
xswap_unmap_clusters(), removed unnecessary block scope around the
err variable in xswap_map_clusters().
- Rebased onto mm-unstable
Baoquan He (15):
mm: zswap: return -ENOENT when the swap device is gone
mm, swap: add CONFIG_XSWAP and xswap fields to swap_info_struct
mm, swap: refactor free_swap_cluster_info to take swap_info_struct
mm, swap: add xswap cluster grow via VM_SPARSE vmalloc
mm, swap: add sysfs create interface for xswap
mm, swap: add xswap grow trigger on cluster allocation
mm, swap: add xswap_try_shrink and shrink trigger on cluster free
mm, swap: free backing pages in xswap_unmap_clusters
mm, swap: add nr_free_tail for O(1) xswap shrink detection
mm, swap: add adjustable runtime ceiling (nr_clusters) for xswap
mm, swap: add debugfs knob for xswap per-device cluster limit
mm, swap: defer xswap shrink to workqueue to avoid lock recursion
mm, swap: refactor swapoff + add xswap_destroy
mm, swap: require zswap for xswap devices
mm, swap: allow setting xswap device priority at creation
Chris Li (1):
mm: xswap support for zswap
include/linux/swap.h | 12 +
mm/Kconfig | 9 +
mm/page_io.c | 16 +
mm/swap_state.c | 7 +
mm/swapfile.c | 1027 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
mm/zswap.c | 9 +-
6 files changed, 993 insertions(+), 87 deletions(-)
base-commit: 169393fff5d1ec2690934067eeb95544ff5ebdd7
--
2.54.0