From 195cf453d2c3d789cbe80e3735755f860c2fb222 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Bron Gondwana Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 22:29:20 -0800 Subject: mm/page-writeback: highmem_is_dirtyable option Add vm.highmem_is_dirtyable toggle A 32 bit machine with HIGHMEM64 enabled running DCC has an MMAPed file of approximately 2Gb size which contains a hash format that is written randomly by the dbclean process. On 2.6.16 this process took a few minutes. With lowmem only accounting of dirty ratios, this takes about 12 hours of 100% disk IO, all random writes. Include a toggle in /proc/sys/vm/highmem_is_dirtyable which can be set to 1 to add the highmem back to the total available memory count. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: Fix the CONFIG_DETECT_SOFTLOCKUP=y build] Signed-off-by: Bron Gondwana Cc: Ethan Solomita Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: WU Fengguang Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt | 15 +++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems') diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt index 0b1b0c008613..07231afca72d 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt @@ -1315,6 +1315,21 @@ for writeout by the pdflush daemons. It is expressed in 100'ths of a second. Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this interval will be written out next time a pdflush daemon wakes up. +highmem_is_dirtyable +-------------------- + +Only present if CONFIG_HIGHMEM is set. + +This defaults to 0 (false), meaning that the ratios set above are calculated +as a percentage of lowmem only. This protects against excessive scanning +in page reclaim, swapping and general VM distress. + +Setting this to 1 can be useful on 32 bit machines where you want to make +random changes within an MMAPed file that is larger than your available +lowmem without causing large quantities of random IO. Is is safe if the +behavior of all programs running on the machine is known and memory will +not be otherwise stressed. + legacy_va_layout ---------------- -- cgit v1.2.3