lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2014]   [Nov]   [23]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: [PATCH v2 6/7] mm/page_owner: keep track of page owners
On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 03:38:32PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 17:14:05 +0900 Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com> wrote:
>
> > This is the page owner tracking code which is introduced
> > so far ago. It is resident on Andrew's tree, though, nobody
> > tried to upstream so it remain as is. Our company uses this feature
> > actively to debug memory leak or to find a memory hogger so
> > I decide to upstream this feature.
> >
> > This functionality help us to know who allocates the page.
> > When allocating a page, we store some information about
> > allocation in extra memory. Later, if we need to know
> > status of all pages, we can get and analyze it from this stored
> > information.
> >
> > In previous version of this feature, extra memory is statically defined
> > in struct page, but, in this version, extra memory is allocated outside
> > of struct page. It enables us to turn on/off this feature at boottime
> > without considerable memory waste.
> >
> > Although we already have tracepoint for tracing page allocation/free,
> > using it to analyze page owner is rather complex. We need to enlarge
> > the trace buffer for preventing overlapping until userspace program
> > launched. And, launched program continually dump out the trace buffer
> > for later analysis and it would change system behaviour with more
> > possibility rather than just keeping it in memory, so bad for debug.
> >
> > Moreover, we can use page_owner feature further for various purposes.
> > For example, we can use it for fragmentation statistics implemented in
> > this patch. And, I also plan to implement some CMA failure debugging
> > feature using this interface.
> >
> > I'd like to give the credit for all developers contributed this feature,
> > but, it's not easy because I don't know exact history. Sorry about that.
> > Below is people who has "Signed-off-by" in the patches in Andrew's tree.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > --- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
> > +++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
> > @@ -884,6 +884,12 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
> > MTRR settings. This parameter disables that behavior,
> > possibly causing your machine to run very slowly.
> >
> > + disable_page_owner
> > + [KNL] Disable to store the information who requests
> > + the page.
>
> How about "Disable storage of the information about who allocated each
> page".
>
> It seems odd that we have a disable flag. Wouldn't it be less
> surprising to disable it by default and only enable if the boot option
> is provided?

Okay. Will do.

>
> What is the overhead of page_owner if it is runtime-disabled, btw?
> Will it be feasible for lots of people to just leave it enabled in
> config and to only turn it on when they want to use it? That would be
> nice. Please add a paragraph on this point to the changelog and the
> yet-to-be-written documentation.

- Without page owner
text data bss dec hex filename
40662 1493 644 42799 a72f mm/page_alloc.o

- With page owner
text data bss dec hex filename
40892 1493 644 43029 a815 mm/page_alloc.o
1427 24 8 1459 5b3 mm/page_ext.o
2722 50 0 2772 ad4 mm/page_owner.o

Roughly, 4 KB code is added in total. No more runtime memory is needed if
runtime-disabled. Size of page_alloc.o is 200 bytes bigger than disabled one.
Page owner addes two 'if' statements in allocator hotpath and two 'if'
statements in coldpath. If runtime-disabled, allocation performance would not
be affected by these few unlikely branches.

Will write this to yet-to-be-written documentation.

Thanks.


\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2014-11-24 04:41    [W:0.037 / U:0.020 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site