mm: balance LRU lists based on relative thrashing
Since the LRUs were split into anon and file lists, the VM has been
balancing between page cache and anonymous pages based on per-list ratios
of scanned vs. rotated pages. In most cases that tips page reclaim
towards the list that is easier to reclaim and has the fewest actively
used pages, but there are a few problems with it:
1. Refaults and LRU rotations are weighted the same way, even though
one costs IO and the other costs a bit of CPU.
2. The less we scan an LRU list based on already observed rotations,
the more we increase the sampling interval for new references, and
rotations become even more likely on that list. This can enter a
death spiral in which we stop looking at one list completely until
the other one is all but annihilated by page reclaim.
Since commit a528910e12ec ("mm: thrash detection-based file cache sizing")
we have refault detection for the page cache. Along with swapin events,
they are good indicators of when the file or anon list, respectively, is
too small for its workingset and needs to grow.
For example, if the page cache is thrashing, the cache pages need more
time in memory, while there may be colder pages on the anonymous list.
Likewise, if swapped pages are faulting back in, it indicates that we
reclaim anonymous pages too aggressively and should back off.
Replace LRU rotations with refaults and swapins as the basis for relative
reclaim cost of the two LRUs. This will have the VM target list balances
that incur the least amount of IO on aggregate.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200520232525.798933-12-hannes@cmpxchg.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
5 files changed