Re: [PATCH V5 3/6] mm: move MADV_FREE pages into LRU_INACTIVE_FILE list

[Johannes Weiner]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 01:31:46PM -0800, Shaohua Li wrote:
> madv MADV_FREE indicate pages are 'lazyfree'. They are still anonymous
> pages, but they can be freed without pageout. To destinguish them
> against normal anonymous pages, we clear their SwapBacked flag.
> 
> MADV_FREE pages could be freed without pageout, so they pretty much like
> used once file pages. For such pages, we'd like to reclaim them once
> there is memory pressure. Also it might be unfair reclaiming MADV_FREE
> pages always before used once file pages and we definitively want to
> reclaim the pages before other anonymous and file pages.
> 
> To speed up MADV_FREE pages reclaim, we put the pages into
> LRU_INACTIVE_FILE list. The rationale is LRU_INACTIVE_FILE list is tiny
> nowadays and should be full of used once file pages. Reclaiming
> MADV_FREE pages will not have much interfere of anonymous and active
> file pages. And the inactive file pages and MADV_FREE pages will be
> reclaimed according to their age, so we don't reclaim too many MADV_FREE
> pages too. Putting the MADV_FREE pages into LRU_INACTIVE_FILE_LIST also
> means we can reclaim the pages without swap support. This idea is
> suggested by Johannes.
> 
> This patch doesn't move MADV_FREE pages to LRU_INACTIVE_FILE list yet to
> avoid bisect failure, next patch will do it.
> 
> The patch is based on Minchan's original patch.
> 
> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Suggested-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shli@xxxxxx>

Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>