Re: [PATCH 6/9] kstaled: rate limit pages scanned per second.

[KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:25:06 -0700
Michel Lespinasse <walken@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 1:59 AM, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
> <kamezawa.hiroyu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:19:50 -0700
> > Michel Lespinasse <walken@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> It tends to perform worse if we try making it multithreaded. What
> >> happens is that the scanning threads call page_referenced() a lot, and
> >> if they both try scanning pages that belong to the same file that
> >> causes the mapping's i_mmap_mutex lock to bounce. Same things happens
> >> if they try scanning pages that belong to the same anon VMA too.
> >>
> >
> > Hmm. with brief thinking, if you can scan list of page tables,
> > you can set young flags without any locks.
> > For inode pages, you can hook page lookup, I think.
> 
> It would be possible to avoid taking rmap locks by instead scanning
> all page tables, and transferring the pte young bits observed there to
> the PageYoung page flag. This is a significant design change, but
> would indeed work.
> 
> Just to clarify the idea, how would you go about finding all page
> tables to scan ? The most straightforward approach would be iterate
> over all processes and scan their address spaces, but I don't think we
> can afford to hold tasklist_lock (even for reads) for so long, so we'd
> have to be a bit smarter than that... I can think of a few different
> ways but I'd like to know if you have something specific in mind
> first.

Maybe there are several idea. 

1. how about chasing "pgd" kmem_cache ?
   I'm not sure but in x86 it seems all pgds are lined to pgd_list.
   Now, it's not RCU list but making it as RCU list isn't hard.
   Note: IIUC, struct page for pgd contains pointer to mm_struct.

2. track dup_mm and do_exec.
   insert hook and maintain list of mm_struct.(It's not needed to be
   implemented as list)

3. Like pgd_list, add some flag to pgd pages. Then, you can scan memmap
   and find 'pgd' page and walk into the page table tree.

Hmm ?

Thanks,
-Kame



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