[patch 101/108] vmscan: count the number of times zone_reclaim() scans and fails

[Greg KH]

2.6.30-stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let us know.

------------------

From: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>

commit 24cf72518c79cdcda486ed26074ff8151291cf65 upstream.

On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that
is a more targetted form of direct reclaim.  On machines with large NUMA
distances for example, a zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that
clean unmapped pages will be reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not
being met.

There is a heuristic that determines if the scan is worthwhile but it is
possible that the heuristic will fail and the CPU gets tied up scanning
uselessly.  Detecting the situation requires some guesswork and
experimentation so this patch adds a counter "zreclaim_failed" to
/proc/vmstat.  If during high CPU utilisation this counter is increasing
rapidly, then the resolution to the problem may be to set
/proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode to 0.

[akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: name things consistently]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@xxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxx>

---
 include/linux/vmstat.h |    3 +++
 mm/vmscan.c            |    3 +++
 mm/vmstat.c            |    3 +++
 3 files changed, 9 insertions(+)

--- a/include/linux/vmstat.h
+++ b/include/linux/vmstat.h
@@ -36,6 +36,9 @@ enum vm_event_item { PGPGIN, PGPGOUT, PS
 		FOR_ALL_ZONES(PGSTEAL),
 		FOR_ALL_ZONES(PGSCAN_KSWAPD),
 		FOR_ALL_ZONES(PGSCAN_DIRECT),
+#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
+		PGSCAN_ZONE_RECLAIM_FAILED,
+#endif
 		PGINODESTEAL, SLABS_SCANNED, KSWAPD_STEAL, KSWAPD_INODESTEAL,
 		PAGEOUTRUN, ALLOCSTALL, PGROTATED,
 #ifdef CONFIG_HUGETLB_PAGE
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -2452,6 +2452,9 @@ int zone_reclaim(struct zone *zone, gfp_
 	ret = __zone_reclaim(zone, gfp_mask, order);
 	zone_clear_flag(zone, ZONE_RECLAIM_LOCKED);
 
+	if (!ret)
+		count_vm_event(PGSCAN_ZONE_RECLAIM_FAILED);
+
 	return ret;
 }
 #endif
--- a/mm/vmstat.c
+++ b/mm/vmstat.c
@@ -675,6 +675,9 @@ static const char * const vmstat_text[] 
 	TEXTS_FOR_ZONES("pgscan_kswapd")
 	TEXTS_FOR_ZONES("pgscan_direct")
 
+#ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
+	"zone_reclaim_failed",
+#endif
 	"pginodesteal",
 	"slabs_scanned",
 	"kswapd_steal",


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