kernel/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/index.rst, branch linux-rolling-stable

mm/swap: do not choose swap device according to numa node

2025-11-17T01:28:27Z

Patch series "mm/swapfile.c: select swap devices of default priority round robin", v5. Currently, on system with multiple swap devices, swap allocation will select one swap device according to priority. The swap device with the highest priority will be chosen to allocate firstly. People can specify a priority from 0 to 32767 when swapon a swap device, or the system will set it from -2 then downwards by default. Meanwhile, on NUMA system, the swap device with node_id will be considered first on that NUMA node of the node_id. In the current code, an array of plist, swap_avail_heads[nid], is used to organize swap devices on each NUMA node. For each NUMA node, there is a plist organizing all swap devices. The 'prio' value in the plist is the negated value of the device's priority due to plist being sorted from low to high. The swap device owning one node_id will be promoted to the front position on that NUMA node, then other swap devices are put in order of their default priority. E.g I got a system with 8 NUMA nodes, and I setup 4 zram partition as swap devices. Current behaviour: their priorities will be(note that -1 is skipped): NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO /dev/zram0 partition 16G 0B -2 /dev/zram1 partition 16G 0B -3 /dev/zram2 partition 16G 0B -4 /dev/zram3 partition 16G 0B -5 And their positions in the 8 swap_avail_lists[nid] will be: swap_avail_lists[0]: /* node 0's available swap device list */ zram0 -> zram1 -> zram2 -> zram3 prio:1 prio:3 prio:4 prio:5 swap_avali_lists[1]: /* node 1's available swap device list */ zram1 -> zram0 -> zram2 -> zram3 prio:1 prio:2 prio:4 prio:5 swap_avail_lists[2]: /* node 2's available swap device list */ zram2 -> zram0 -> zram1 -> zram3 prio:1 prio:2 prio:3 prio:5 swap_avail_lists[3]: /* node 3's available swap device list */ zram3 -> zram0 -> zram1 -> zram2 prio:1 prio:2 prio:3 prio:4 swap_avail_lists[4-7]: /* node 4,5,6,7's available swap device list */ zram0 -> zram1 -> zram2 -> zram3 prio:2 prio:3 prio:4 prio:5 The adjustment for swap device with node_id intended to decrease the pressure of lock contention for one swap device by taking different swap device on different node. The adjustment was introduced in commit a2468cc9bfdf ("swap: choose swap device according to numa node"). However, the adjustment is a little coarse-grained. On the node, the swap device sharing the node's id will always be selected firstly by node's CPUs until exhausted, then next one. And on other nodes where no swap device shares its node id, swap device with priority '-2' will be selected firstly until exhausted, then next with priority '-3'. This is the swapon output during the process high pressure vm-scability test is being taken. It's clearly showing zram0 is heavily exploited until exhausted. =================================== [root@hp-dl385g10-03 ~]# swapon NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO /dev/zram0 partition 16G 15.7G -2 /dev/zram1 partition 16G 3.4G -3 /dev/zram2 partition 16G 3.4G -4 /dev/zram3 partition 16G 2.6G -5 The node based strategy on selecting swap device is much better then the old way one by one selecting swap device. However it is still unreasonable because swap devices are assumed to have similar accessing speed if no priority is specified when swapon. It's unfair and doesn't make sense just because one swap device is swapped on firstly, its priority will be higher than the one swapped on later. So in this patchset, change is made to select the swap device round robin if default priority. In code, the plist array swap_avail_heads[nid] is replaced with a plist swap_avail_head which reverts commit a2468cc9bfdf. Meanwhile, on top of the revert, further change is taken to make any device w/o specified priority get the same default priority '-1'. Surely, swap device with specified priority are always put foremost, this is not impacted. If you care about their different accessing speed, then use 'swapon -p xx' to deploy priority for your swap devices. New behaviour: swap_avail_list: /* one global available swap device list */ zram0 -> zram1 -> zram2 -> zram3 prio:1 prio:1 prio:1 prio:1 This is the swapon output during the process high pressure vm-scability being taken, all is selected round robin: ======================================= [root@hp-dl385g10-03 linux]# swapon NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO /dev/zram0 partition 16G 12.6G -1 /dev/zram1 partition 16G 12.6G -1 /dev/zram2 partition 16G 12.6G -1 /dev/zram3 partition 16G 12.6G -1 With the change, we can see about 18% efficiency promotion as below: vm-scability test: ================== Test with: usemem --init-time -O -y -x -n 31 2G (4G memcg, zram as swap) Before: After: System time: 637.92 s 526.74 s (lower is better) Sum Throughput: 3546.56 MB/s 4207.56 MB/s (higher is better) Single process Throughput: 114.40 MB/s 135.72 MB/s (higher is better) free latency: 10138455.99 us 6810119.01 us (low is better) This patch (of 2): This reverts commit a2468cc9bfdf ("swap: choose swap device according to numa node"). After this patch, the behaviour will change back to pre-commit a2468cc9bfdf. Means the priority will be set from -1 then downwards by default, and when swapping, it will exhault swap device one by one according to priority from high to low. This is preparation work for later change. [root@hp-dl385g10-03 ~]# swapon NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO /dev/zram0 partition 16G 16G -1 /dev/zram1 partition 16G 966.2M -2 /dev/zram2 partition 16G 0B -3 /dev/zram3 partition 16G 0B -4 Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251028034308.929550-1-bhe@redhat.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251028034308.929550-2-bhe@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Baoquan He Suggested-by: Chris Li Acked-by: Chris Li Acked-by: Nhat Pham Reviewed-by: Kairui Song Cc: Barry Song Cc: Kemeng Shi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

doc: Move SLUB documentation to the admin guide

2025-06-18T11:06:26Z

This section is supposed to be for internal documentation, while the document is advice for sysadmins. Move it to the appropriate place. Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) Acked-by: Harry Yoo Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20250611155916.2579160-2-willy@infradead.org Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka

Documentation: add documentation for KHO

2025-05-13T06:50:42Z

With KHO in place, let's add documentation that describes what it is and how to use it. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250509074635.3187114-17-changyuanl@google.com Signed-off-by: Alexander Graf Co-developed-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) Co-developed-by: Changyuan Lyu Signed-off-by: Changyuan Lyu Cc: Andy Lutomirski Cc: Anthony Yznaga Cc: Arnd Bergmann Cc: Ashish Kalra Cc: Ben Herrenschmidt Cc: Borislav Betkov Cc: Catalin Marinas Cc: Dave Hansen Cc: David Woodhouse Cc: Eric Biederman Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: Ingo Molnar Cc: James Gowans Cc: Jason Gunthorpe Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Krzysztof Kozlowski Cc: Marc Rutland Cc: Paolo Bonzini Cc: Pasha Tatashin Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Pratyush Yadav Cc: Rob Herring Cc: Saravana Kannan Cc: Stanislav Kinsburskii Cc: Steven Rostedt Cc: Thomas Gleinxer Cc: Thomas Lendacky Cc: Will Deacon Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

docs/admin-guide/mm: correct typo 'quired' to 'queried'

2024-07-03T22:22:36Z

Convert the word "quired" to the word "queried" which makes more sense in this context. Signed-off-by: Daniel Watson Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/878qymrjrg.fsf@trent-reznor

docs/admin-guide/mm: remove useless markup

2023-02-02T17:18:05Z

It is enough to use a file name to cross-reference another rst document. Jon says: The right things will happen in the HTML output, readers of the plain-text will know immediately where to go, and we don't have to add the label clutter. Drop reference markup and unnecessary labels and use plain file names. Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (IBM) Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230201094156.991542-4-rppt@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet

mm: multi-gen LRU: admin guide

2022-09-27T02:46:10Z

Add an admin guide. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220918080010.2920238-14-yuzhao@google.com Signed-off-by: Yu Zhao Acked-by: Brian Geffon Acked-by: Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) Acked-by: Oleksandr Natalenko Acked-by: Steven Barrett Acked-by: Suleiman Souhlal Acked-by: Mike Rapoport Tested-by: Daniel Byrne Tested-by: Donald Carr Tested-by: Holger Hoffstätte Tested-by: Konstantin Kharlamov Tested-by: Shuang Zhai Tested-by: Sofia Trinh Tested-by: Vaibhav Jain Cc: Andi Kleen Cc: Aneesh Kumar K.V Cc: Barry Song Cc: Catalin Marinas Cc: Dave Hansen Cc: Hillf Danton Cc: Jens Axboe Cc: Johannes Weiner Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Matthew Wilcox Cc: Mel Gorman Cc: Miaohe Lin Cc: Michael Larabel Cc: Michal Hocko Cc: Mike Rapoport Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Qi Zheng Cc: Tejun Heo Cc: Vlastimil Babka Cc: Will Deacon Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm: docs: document shrinker debugfs

2022-07-04T01:08:40Z

Add a document describing the shrinker debugfs interface. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220601032227.4076670-5-roman.gushchin@linux.dev Signed-off-by: Roman Gushchin Reviewed-by: Muchun Song Cc: Christophe JAILLET Cc: Dave Chinner Cc: Hillf Danton Cc: Kent Overstreet Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

Documentation/vm: move user guides to admin-guide/mm/

2021-11-06T20:30:44Z

Most memory management user guide documents are in 'admin-guide/mm/', but two of those are in 'vm/'. This moves the two docs into 'admin-guide/mm' for easier documents finding. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210917123958.3819-2-sj@kernel.org Signed-off-by: SeongJae Park Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Documentation: add documents for DAMON

2021-09-08T18:50:25Z

This commit adds documents for DAMON under `Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/` and `Documentation/vm/damon/`. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210716081449.22187-11-sj38.park@gmail.com Signed-off-by: SeongJae Park Reviewed-by: Fernand Sieber Reviewed-by: Markus Boehme Cc: Alexander Shishkin Cc: Amit Shah Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Cc: Brendan Higgins Cc: David Hildenbrand Cc: David Rientjes Cc: David Woodhouse Cc: Fan Du Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman Cc: Greg Thelen Cc: Ingo Molnar Cc: Joe Perches Cc: Jonathan Cameron Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Leonard Foerster Cc: Marco Elver Cc: Maximilian Heyne Cc: Mel Gorman Cc: Minchan Kim Cc: Namhyung Kim Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Rik van Riel Cc: Shakeel Butt Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Steven Rostedt (VMware) Cc: Vladimir Davydov Cc: Vlastimil Babka Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Documentation: fix multiple typos found in the admin-guide subdirectory

2020-12-08T17:27:56Z

Fix thirty five typos in dm-integrity.rst, dm-raid.rst, dm-zoned.rst, verity.rst, writecache.rst, tsx_async_abort.rst, md.rst, bttv.rst, dvb_references.rst, frontend-cardlist.rst, gspca-cardlist.rst, ipu3.rst, remote-controller.rst, mm/index.rst, numaperf.rst, userfaultfd.rst, module-signing.rst, imx-ddr.rst, intel-speed-select.rst, intel_pstate.rst, ramoops.rst, abi.rst, kernel.rst, vm.rst Signed-off-by: Andrew Klychkov Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20201204072848.GA49895@spblnx124.lan Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet