linux/mm
Izik Eidus 31dbd01f31 ksm: Kernel SamePage Merging
Ksm is code that allows merging of identical pages between one or more
applications, in a way invisible to the applications that use it.  Pages
that are merged are marked as read-only, then COWed when any application
tries to change them.

Whereas fork() allows sharing anonymous pages between parent and child,
ksm can share anonymous pages between unrelated processes.

Ksm works by walking over the memory pages of the applications it scans,
in order to find identical pages.  It uses two sorted data structures,
called the stable and unstable trees, to locate identical pages in an
effective way.

When ksm finds two identical pages, it marks them as readonly and merges
them into a single page.  After the pages have been marked as readonly and
merged into one, Linux treats them as normal copy-on-write pages, copying
to a fresh anonymous page if write access is required later.

Ksm scans and merges anonymous pages only in those memory areas that have
been registered with it by madvise(addr, length, MADV_MERGEABLE).

The ksm scanner is controlled by sysfs files in /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/:

max_kernel_pages - the maximum number of unswappable kernel pages
                   which may be allocated by ksm (0 for unlimited).

kernel_pages_allocated - how many ksm pages are currently allocated,
                         sharing identical content between different
                         processes (pages unswappable in this release).

pages_shared - how many pages have been saved by sharing with ksm pages
               (kernel_pages_allocated being excluded from this count).

pages_to_scan - how many pages ksm should scan before sleeping.

sleep_millisecs - how many milliseconds ksm should sleep between scans.

run - write 0 to disable ksm, read 0 while ksm is disabled (default),
      write 1 to run ksm, read 1 while ksm is running,
      write 2 to disable ksm and unmerge all its pages.

Includes contributions by Andrea Arcangeli Chris Wright and Hugh Dickins.

[hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk: fix rare page leak]
Signed-off-by: Izik Eidus <ieidus@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Signed-off-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
..
allocpercpu.c percpu: use dynamic percpu allocator as the default percpu allocator 2009-06-24 15:13:35 +09:00
backing-dev.c writeback: splice dirty inode entries to default bdi on bdi_destroy() 2009-09-16 15:18:52 +02:00
bootmem.c kmemleak: Do not report alloc_bootmem blocks as leaks 2009-08-27 14:29:17 +01:00
bounce.c block: remove some includings of blktrace_api.h 2009-06-16 11:19:36 +02:00
debug-pagealloc.c generic debug pagealloc 2009-04-01 08:59:13 -07:00
dmapool.c dmapools: protect page_list walk in show_pools() 2009-06-30 18:56:00 -07:00
fadvise.c readahead: move max_sane_readahead() calls into force_page_cache_readahead() 2009-06-16 19:47:28 -07:00
failslab.c kmemtrace, mm: fix slab.h dependency problem in mm/failslab.c 2009-04-03 12:23:01 +02:00
filemap_xip.c mm: do_xip_mapping_read: fix length calculation 2009-04-02 19:04:49 -07:00
filemap.c mm: oom analysis: add shmem vmstat 2009-09-22 07:17:27 -07:00
fremap.c Do not account for the address space used by hugetlbfs using VM_ACCOUNT 2009-02-10 10:48:42 -08:00
highmem.c block: remove some includings of blktrace_api.h 2009-06-16 11:19:36 +02:00
hugetlb.c hugetlb: restore interleaving of bootmem huge pages 2009-09-22 07:17:26 -07:00
init-mm.c mm: consolidate init_mm definition 2009-06-16 19:47:28 -07:00
internal.h vmscan: do not unconditionally treat zones that fail zone_reclaim() as full 2009-06-16 19:47:45 -07:00
Kconfig ksm: the mm interface to ksm 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
Kconfig.debug kmemcheck: enable in the x86 Kconfig 2009-06-15 15:49:15 +02:00
kmemcheck.c kmemcheck: add hooks for the page allocator 2009-06-15 15:48:33 +02:00
kmemleak-test.c percpu: clean up percpu variable definitions 2009-06-24 15:13:48 +09:00
kmemleak.c kmemleak: Improve the "Early log buffer exceeded" error message 2009-09-11 10:42:09 +01:00
ksm.c ksm: Kernel SamePage Merging 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
maccess.c [S390] maccess: add weak attribute to probe_kernel_write 2009-06-12 10:27:37 +02:00
madvise.c ksm: the mm interface to ksm 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
Makefile ksm: the mm interface to ksm 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
memcontrol.c cgroup avoid permanent sleep at rmdir 2009-07-29 19:10:35 -07:00
memory_hotplug.c memory hotplug: update zone pcp at memory online 2009-09-22 07:17:25 -07:00
memory.c ksm: identify PageKsm pages 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
mempolicy.c mm: make set_mempolicy(MPOL_INTERLEAV) N_HIGH_MEMORY aware 2009-08-07 10:39:55 -07:00
mempool.c mempool.c: clean up type-casting 2009-08-10 08:31:16 -07:00
migrate.c mm: vmstat: add isolate pages 2009-09-22 07:17:29 -07:00
mincore.c [CVE-2009-0029] System call wrappers part 14 2009-01-14 14:15:24 +01:00
mlock.c mm: remove CONFIG_UNEVICTABLE_LRU config option 2009-06-16 19:47:42 -07:00
mm_init.c mm: mminit_loglevel cannot be __meminitdata anymore 2008-08-20 15:40:30 -07:00
mmap.c perf: Do the big rename: Performance Counters -> Performance Events 2009-09-21 14:28:04 +02:00
mmu_notifier.c ksm: add mmu_notifier set_pte_at_notify() 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
mmzone.c [ARM] Double check memmap is actually valid with a memmap has unexpected holes V2 2009-05-18 11:22:24 +01:00
mprotect.c perf: Do the big rename: Performance Counters -> Performance Events 2009-09-21 14:28:04 +02:00
mremap.c [CVE-2009-0029] System call wrappers part 13 2009-01-14 14:15:23 +01:00
msync.c [CVE-2009-0029] System call wrappers part 13 2009-01-14 14:15:23 +01:00
nommu.c nommu: fix error handling in do_mmap_pgoff() 2009-09-05 11:30:42 -07:00
oom_kill.c mm: revert "oom: move oom_adj value" 2009-08-18 16:31:13 -07:00
page_alloc.c mm: perform non-atomic test-clear of PG_mlocked on free 2009-09-22 07:17:30 -07:00
page_cgroup.c memory hotplug: alloc page from other node in memory online 2009-09-22 07:17:26 -07:00
page_io.c mm: remove file argument from swap_readpage() 2009-06-16 19:47:44 -07:00
page_isolation.c memory hotplug: fix page_zone() calculation in test_pages_isolated() 2008-11-06 15:41:19 -08:00
page-writeback.c mm: count only reclaimable lru pages 2009-09-22 07:17:30 -07:00
pagewalk.c
percpu.c Merge branch 'for-next' into for-linus 2009-09-15 09:57:19 +09:00
prio_tree.c
quicklist.c percpu: cleanup percpu array definitions 2009-06-24 15:13:45 +09:00
readahead.c readahead: introduce context readahead algorithm 2009-06-16 19:47:30 -07:00
rmap.c ksm: no debug in page_dup_rmap() 2009-09-22 07:17:31 -07:00
shmem_acl.c shmfs: use 'check_acl' instead of 'permission' 2009-09-08 11:08:46 -07:00
shmem.c Driver Core: devtmpfs - kernel-maintained tmpfs-based /dev 2009-09-15 09:50:49 -07:00
slab.c SLAB: Fix lockdep annotations 2009-06-29 09:57:10 +03:00
slob.c slab: remove duplicate kmem_cache_init_late() declarations 2009-08-06 11:36:25 +03:00
slub.c slub: Fix build error in kmem_cache_open() with !CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG 2009-09-15 22:32:10 +03:00
sparse-vmemmap.c memory hotplug: alloc page from other node in memory online 2009-09-22 07:17:26 -07:00
sparse.c memory hotplug: alloc page from other node in memory online 2009-09-22 07:17:26 -07:00
swap_state.c writeback: add name to backing_dev_info 2009-09-11 09:20:26 +02:00
swap.c mm: fix Committed_AS underflow on large NR_CPUS environment 2009-05-02 15:36:10 -07:00
swapfile.c block: use blkdev_issue_discard in blk_ioctl_discard 2009-09-14 08:24:53 +02:00
thrash.c mm: pass mm to grab_swap_token 2009-06-23 12:50:05 -07:00
truncate.c mm: remove __invalidate_mapping_pages variant 2009-06-16 19:47:43 -07:00
util.c Merge branches 'slab/documentation', 'slab/fixes', 'slob/cleanups' and 'slub/fixes' into for-linus 2009-06-17 08:30:15 +03:00
vmalloc.c vmalloc.c: fix double error checking 2009-09-22 07:17:30 -07:00
vmscan.c vmscan: kill unnecessary prefetch 2009-09-22 07:17:30 -07:00
vmstat.c mm: vmstat: add isolate pages 2009-09-22 07:17:29 -07:00