linux/Documentation/sysctl, branch v2.6.30

Revert "mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads"

2009-05-15T09:32:24Z

This reverts commit fafd688e4c0c34da0f3de909881117d374e4c7af. Work is progressing to switch away from pdflush as the process backing for flushing out dirty data. So it seems pointless to add more knobs to control pdflush threads. The original author of the patch did not have any specific use cases for adding the knobs, so we can easily revert this before 2.6.30 to avoid having to maintain this API forever. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

mm: prevent divide error for small values of vm_dirty_bytes

2009-05-02T22:36:10Z

Avoid setting less than two pages for vm_dirty_bytes: this is necessary to avoid potential division by 0 (like the following) in get_dirty_limits(). [ 49.951610] divide error: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP [ 49.952195] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent [ 49.952195] CPU 1 [ 49.952195] Modules linked in: pcspkr [ 49.952195] Pid: 3064, comm: dd Not tainted 2.6.30-rc3 #1 [ 49.952195] RIP: 0010:[] [] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP: 0018:ffff88001de03a98 EFLAGS: 00010202 [ 49.952195] RAX: 00000000000000c0 RBX: ffff88001de03b80 RCX: 28f5c28f5c28f5c3 [ 49.952195] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000000000c0 RDI: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] RBP: ffff88001de03ae8 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] R10: ffff88001ddda9a0 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 0000000000000001 [ 49.952195] R13: ffff88001fbc8218 R14: ffff88001de03b70 R15: ffff88001de03b78 [ 49.952195] FS: 00007fe9a435b6f0(0000) GS:ffff8800025d9000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 49.952195] CR2: 00007fe9a39ab000 CR3: 000000001de38000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 [ 49.952195] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [ 49.952195] Process dd (pid: 3064, threadinfo ffff88001de02000, task ffff88001ddda250) [ 49.952195] Stack: [ 49.952195] ffff88001fa0de00 ffff88001f2dbd70 ffff88001f9fe800 000080b900000000 [ 49.952195] 00000000000000c0 ffff8800027a6100 0000000000000400 ffff88001fbc8218 [ 49.952195] 0000000000000000 0000000000000600 ffff88001de03bb8 ffffffff802d3ed7 [ 49.952195] Call Trace: [ 49.952195] [] balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr+0x1d7/0x3f0 [ 49.952195] [] ? ext3_writeback_write_end+0x9e/0x120 [ 49.952195] [] generic_file_buffered_write+0x12f/0x330 [ 49.952195] [] __generic_file_aio_write_nolock+0x26d/0x460 [ 49.952195] [] ? generic_file_aio_write+0x52/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [] generic_file_aio_write+0x69/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [] ext3_file_write+0x26/0xc0 [ 49.952195] [] do_sync_write+0xf1/0x140 [ 49.952195] [] ? get_lock_stats+0x2a/0x60 [ 49.952195] [] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 [ 49.952195] [] vfs_write+0xcb/0x190 [ 49.952195] [] sys_write+0x50/0x90 [ 49.952195] [] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b [ 49.952195] Code: 00 00 00 2b 05 09 1c 17 01 48 89 c6 49 0f af f4 48 c1 ee 02 48 89 f0 48 f7 e1 48 89 d6 31 d2 48 c1 ee 02 48 0f af 75 d0 48 89 f0 <48> f7 f7 41 8b 95 ac 01 00 00 48 89 c7 49 0f af d4 48 c1 ea 02 [ 49.952195] RIP [] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP [ 50.096523] ---[ end trace 008d7aa02f244d7b ]--- Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: David Rientjes Cc: Dave Chinner Cc: Christoph Lameter Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Documentation/sysctl/net.txt: fix a typo

2009-04-13T22:04:28Z

s/spicified/specified Signed-off-by: Li Zefan Cc: "David S. Miller" Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads

2009-04-07T15:31:03Z

Add /proc entries to give the admin the ability to control the minimum and maximum number of pdflush threads. This allows finer control of pdflush on both large and small machines. The rationale is simply one size does not fit all. Admins on large and/or small systems may want to tune the min/max pdflush thread count to best suit their needs. Right now the min/max is hardcoded to 2/8. While probably a fair estimate for smaller machines, large machines with large numbers of CPUs and large numbers of filesystems/block devices may benefit from larger numbers of threads working on different block devices. Even if the background flushing algorithm is radically changed, it is still likely that multiple threads will be involved and admins would still desire finer control on the min/max other than to have to recompile the kernel. The patch adds '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_min' and '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_max' with r/w permissions. The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_min is 1 and the maximum value is the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_max. This minimum is required since additional thread creation is performed in a pdflush thread itself. The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_max is the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_min and the maximum value can be 1000. Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt is also updated. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment, fix whitespace, use __read_mostly] Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

documentation: fix unix_dgram_qlen description

2009-04-03T02:04:53Z

Previous description about system parameter in /proc/sys/net/unix/ is wrong (or missed). Simply add a new description about unix_dgram_qlen according to latest kernel. Signed-off-by: Li Xiaodong Cc: "David S. Miller" Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

documentation: update Documentation/filesystem/proc.txt and Documentation/sysctls

2009-04-03T02:04:53Z

Now /proc/sys is described in many places and much information is redundant. This patch updates the proc.txt and move the /proc/sys desciption out to the files in Documentation/sysctls. Details are: merge - 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data - 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem - 2.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface with Documentation/sysctls/fs.txt. remove - 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats since it's not better then the Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt. merge - 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters with Documentation/sysctls/kernel.txt remove - 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters since it's obsolete the sysfs is used now. remove - 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls since it's not better then the Documentation/sysctls/sunrpc.txt move - 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff - 2.9 Appletalk - 2.10 IPX to newly created Documentation/sysctls/net.txt. remove - 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings since it's not better then the Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt. add - Chapter 3 Per-Process Parameters to descibe /proc//xxx parameters. Signed-off-by: Shen Feng Cc: Randy Dunlap Cc: "David S. Miller" Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Update of Documentation: vm.txt and proc.txt

2009-01-16T00:39:35Z

Update Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt and Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt. More specifically, the section on /proc/sys/vm in Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt was removed and a link to Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt added. Most of the verbiage from proc.txt was simply moved in vm.txt, with new addtional text for "swappiness" and "stat_interval". Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale Acked-by: Randy Dunlap Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

NOMMU: Make mmap allocation page trimming behaviour configurable.

2009-01-08T12:04:47Z

NOMMU mmap allocates a piece of memory for an mmap that's rounded up in size to the nearest power-of-2 number of pages. Currently it then discards the excess pages back to the page allocator, making that memory available for use by other things. This can, however, cause greater amount of fragmentation. To counter this, a sysctl is added in order to fine-tune the trimming behaviour. The default behaviour remains to trim pages aggressively, while this can either be disabled completely or set to a higher page-granular watermark in order to have finer-grained control. vm region vm_top bits taken from an earlier patch by David Howells. Signed-off-by: Paul Mundt Signed-off-by: David Howells Tested-by: Mike Frysinger

mm: add dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes sysctls

2009-01-06T23:59:03Z

This change introduces two new sysctls to /proc/sys/vm: dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes. dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_background_ratio and dirty_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_ratio. With growing memory capacities of individual machines, it's no longer sufficient to specify dirty thresholds as a percentage of the amount of dirtyable memory over the entire system. dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes specify quantities of memory, in bytes, that represent the dirty limits for the entire system. If either of these values is set, its value represents the amount of dirty memory that is needed to commence either background or direct writeback. When a `bytes' or `ratio' file is written, its counterpart becomes a function of the written value. For example, if dirty_bytes is written to be 8096, 8K of memory is required to commence direct writeback. dirty_ratio is then functionally equivalent to 8K / the amount of dirtyable memory: dirtyable_memory = free pages + mapped pages + file cache dirty_background_bytes = dirty_background_ratio * dirtyable_memory -or- dirty_background_ratio = dirty_background_bytes / dirtyable_memory AND dirty_bytes = dirty_ratio * dirtyable_memory -or- dirty_ratio = dirty_bytes / dirtyable_memory Only one of dirty_background_bytes and dirty_background_ratio may be specified at a time, and only one of dirty_bytes and dirty_ratio may be specified. When one sysctl is written, the other appears as 0 when read. The `bytes' files operate on a page size granularity since dirty limits are compared with ZVC values, which are in page units. Prior to this change, the minimum dirty_ratio was 5 as implemented by get_dirty_limits() although /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio would show any user written value between 0 and 100. This restriction is maintained, but dirty_bytes has a lower limit of only one page. Also prior to this change, the dirty_background_ratio could not equal or exceed dirty_ratio. This restriction is maintained in addition to restricting dirty_background_bytes. If either background threshold equals or exceeds that of the dirty threshold, it is implicitly set to half the dirty threshold. Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Dave Chinner Cc: Christoph Lameter Signed-off-by: David Rientjes Cc: Andrea Righi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Document kernel taint flags properly

2008-10-29T22:03:49Z

This fills in the documentation for all of the current kernel taint flags, and fixes the number for TAINT_CRAP, which was incorrectly described. Cc: Michael Kerrisk Cc: Randy Dunlap Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman