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Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +02001.. _unevictable_lru:
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -07002
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +02003==============================
4Unevictable LRU Infrastructure
5==============================
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -07006
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +02007.. contents:: :local:
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -07008
9
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020010Introduction
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070011============
12
13This document describes the Linux memory manager's "Unevictable LRU"
14infrastructure and the use of this to manage several types of "unevictable"
15pages.
16
17The document attempts to provide the overall rationale behind this mechanism
18and the rationale for some of the design decisions that drove the
19implementation. The latter design rationale is discussed in the context of an
20implementation description. Admittedly, one can obtain the implementation
21details - the "what does it do?" - by reading the code. One hopes that the
22descriptions below add value by provide the answer to "why does it do that?".
23
24
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020025
26The Unevictable LRU
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070027===================
28
29The Unevictable LRU facility adds an additional LRU list to track unevictable
30pages and to hide these pages from vmscan. This mechanism is based on a patch
31by Larry Woodman of Red Hat to address several scalability problems with page
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070032reclaim in Linux. The problems have been observed at customer sites on large
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070033memory x86_64 systems.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070034
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070035To illustrate this with an example, a non-NUMA x86_64 platform with 128GB of
36main memory will have over 32 million 4k pages in a single zone. When a large
37fraction of these pages are not evictable for any reason [see below], vmscan
38will spend a lot of time scanning the LRU lists looking for the small fraction
39of pages that are evictable. This can result in a situation where all CPUs are
40spending 100% of their time in vmscan for hours or days on end, with the system
41completely unresponsive.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070042
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070043The unevictable list addresses the following classes of unevictable pages:
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070044
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020045 * Those owned by ramfs.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070046
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020047 * Those mapped into SHM_LOCK'd shared memory regions.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070048
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020049 * Those mapped into VM_LOCKED [mlock()ed] VMAs.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070050
51The infrastructure may also be able to handle other conditions that make pages
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070052unevictable, either by definition or by circumstance, in the future.
53
54
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020055The Unevictable Page List
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070056-------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070057
58The Unevictable LRU infrastructure consists of an additional, per-zone, LRU list
59called the "unevictable" list and an associated page flag, PG_unevictable, to
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070060indicate that the page is being managed on the unevictable list.
61
62The PG_unevictable flag is analogous to, and mutually exclusive with, the
63PG_active flag in that it indicates on which LRU list a page resides when
Michal Hockoe6e8dd52011-03-16 15:01:37 +010064PG_lru is set.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070065
66The Unevictable LRU infrastructure maintains unevictable pages on an additional
67LRU list for a few reasons:
68
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070069 (1) We get to "treat unevictable pages just like we treat other pages in the
70 system - which means we get to use the same code to manipulate them, the
71 same code to isolate them (for migrate, etc.), the same code to keep track
72 of the statistics, etc..." [Rik van Riel]
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070073
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070074 (2) We want to be able to migrate unevictable pages between nodes for memory
75 defragmentation, workload management and memory hotplug. The linux kernel
76 can only migrate pages that it can successfully isolate from the LRU
77 lists. If we were to maintain pages elsewhere than on an LRU-like list,
78 where they can be found by isolate_lru_page(), we would prevent their
79 migration, unless we reworked migration code to find the unevictable pages
80 itself.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070081
82
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070083The unevictable list does not differentiate between file-backed and anonymous,
84swap-backed pages. This differentiation is only important while the pages are,
85in fact, evictable.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070086
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070087The unevictable list benefits from the "arrayification" of the per-zone LRU
88lists and statistics originally proposed and posted by Christoph Lameter.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070089
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070090The unevictable list does not use the LRU pagevec mechanism. Rather,
91unevictable pages are placed directly on the page's zone's unevictable list
92under the zone lru_lock. This allows us to prevent the stranding of pages on
93the unevictable list when one task has the page isolated from the LRU and other
94tasks are changing the "evictability" state of the page.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070095
96
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +020097Memory Control Group Interaction
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -070098--------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -070099
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700100The unevictable LRU facility interacts with the memory control group [aka
seokhoon.yoon09c3bcc2016-08-02 23:23:57 +0900101memory controller; see Documentation/cgroup-v1/memory.txt] by extending the
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700102lru_list enum.
103
104The memory controller data structure automatically gets a per-zone unevictable
105list as a result of the "arrayification" of the per-zone LRU lists (one per
106lru_list enum element). The memory controller tracks the movement of pages to
107and from the unevictable list.
108
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700109When a memory control group comes under memory pressure, the controller will
110not attempt to reclaim pages on the unevictable list. This has a couple of
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700111effects:
112
113 (1) Because the pages are "hidden" from reclaim on the unevictable list, the
114 reclaim process can be more efficient, dealing only with pages that have a
115 chance of being reclaimed.
116
117 (2) On the other hand, if too many of the pages charged to the control group
118 are unevictable, the evictable portion of the working set of the tasks in
119 the control group may not fit into the available memory. This can cause
120 the control group to thrash or to OOM-kill tasks.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700121
122
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200123.. _mark_addr_space_unevict:
124
125Marking Address Spaces Unevictable
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700126----------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700127
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700128For facilities such as ramfs none of the pages attached to the address space
129may be evicted. To prevent eviction of any such pages, the AS_UNEVICTABLE
130address space flag is provided, and this can be manipulated by a filesystem
131using a number of wrapper functions:
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700132
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200133 * ``void mapping_set_unevictable(struct address_space *mapping);``
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700134
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700135 Mark the address space as being completely unevictable.
136
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200137 * ``void mapping_clear_unevictable(struct address_space *mapping);``
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700138
139 Mark the address space as being evictable.
140
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200141 * ``int mapping_unevictable(struct address_space *mapping);``
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700142
143 Query the address space, and return true if it is completely
144 unevictable.
145
146These are currently used in two places in the kernel:
147
148 (1) By ramfs to mark the address spaces of its inodes when they are created,
149 and this mark remains for the life of the inode.
150
151 (2) By SYSV SHM to mark SHM_LOCK'd address spaces until SHM_UNLOCK is called.
152
153 Note that SHM_LOCK is not required to page in the locked pages if they're
154 swapped out; the application must touch the pages manually if it wants to
155 ensure they're in memory.
156
157
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200158Detecting Unevictable Pages
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700159---------------------------
160
161The function page_evictable() in vmscan.c determines whether a page is
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200162evictable or not using the query function outlined above [see section
163:ref:`Marking address spaces unevictable <mark_addr_space_unevict>`]
164to check the AS_UNEVICTABLE flag.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700165
166For address spaces that are so marked after being populated (as SHM regions
167might be), the lock action (eg: SHM_LOCK) can be lazy, and need not populate
168the page tables for the region as does, for example, mlock(), nor need it make
169any special effort to push any pages in the SHM_LOCK'd area to the unevictable
170list. Instead, vmscan will do this if and when it encounters the pages during
171a reclamation scan.
172
173On an unlock action (such as SHM_UNLOCK), the unlocker (eg: shmctl()) must scan
174the pages in the region and "rescue" them from the unevictable list if no other
175condition is keeping them unevictable. If an unevictable region is destroyed,
176the pages are also "rescued" from the unevictable list in the process of
177freeing them.
178
179page_evictable() also checks for mlocked pages by testing an additional page
Hugh Dickins39b5f292012-10-08 16:33:18 -0700180flag, PG_mlocked (as wrapped by PageMlocked()), which is set when a page is
181faulted into a VM_LOCKED vma, or found in a vma being VM_LOCKED.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700182
183
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200184Vmscan's Handling of Unevictable Pages
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700185--------------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700186
187If unevictable pages are culled in the fault path, or moved to the unevictable
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700188list at mlock() or mmap() time, vmscan will not encounter the pages until they
189have become evictable again (via munlock() for example) and have been "rescued"
190from the unevictable list. However, there may be situations where we decide,
191for the sake of expediency, to leave a unevictable page on one of the regular
192active/inactive LRU lists for vmscan to deal with. vmscan checks for such
193pages in all of the shrink_{active|inactive|page}_list() functions and will
194"cull" such pages that it encounters: that is, it diverts those pages to the
195unevictable list for the zone being scanned.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700196
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700197There may be situations where a page is mapped into a VM_LOCKED VMA, but the
198page is not marked as PG_mlocked. Such pages will make it all the way to
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700199shrink_page_list() where they will be detected when vmscan walks the reverse
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700200map in try_to_unmap(). If try_to_unmap() returns SWAP_MLOCK,
201shrink_page_list() will cull the page at that point.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700202
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700203To "cull" an unevictable page, vmscan simply puts the page back on the LRU list
204using putback_lru_page() - the inverse operation to isolate_lru_page() - after
205dropping the page lock. Because the condition which makes the page unevictable
206may change once the page is unlocked, putback_lru_page() will recheck the
207unevictable state of a page that it places on the unevictable list. If the
208page has become unevictable, putback_lru_page() removes it from the list and
209retries, including the page_unevictable() test. Because such a race is a rare
210event and movement of pages onto the unevictable list should be rare, these
211extra evictabilty checks should not occur in the majority of calls to
212putback_lru_page().
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700213
214
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200215MLOCKED Pages
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700216=============
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700217
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700218The unevictable page list is also useful for mlock(), in addition to ramfs and
219SYSV SHM. Note that mlock() is only available in CONFIG_MMU=y situations; in
220NOMMU situations, all mappings are effectively mlocked.
221
222
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200223History
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700224-------
225
226The "Unevictable mlocked Pages" infrastructure is based on work originally
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700227posted by Nick Piggin in an RFC patch entitled "mm: mlocked pages off LRU".
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700228Nick posted his patch as an alternative to a patch posted by Christoph Lameter
229to achieve the same objective: hiding mlocked pages from vmscan.
230
231In Nick's patch, he used one of the struct page LRU list link fields as a count
232of VM_LOCKED VMAs that map the page. This use of the link field for a count
233prevented the management of the pages on an LRU list, and thus mlocked pages
234were not migratable as isolate_lru_page() could not find them, and the LRU list
235link field was not available to the migration subsystem.
236
237Nick resolved this by putting mlocked pages back on the lru list before
238attempting to isolate them, thus abandoning the count of VM_LOCKED VMAs. When
239Nick's patch was integrated with the Unevictable LRU work, the count was
240replaced by walking the reverse map to determine whether any VM_LOCKED VMAs
241mapped the page. More on this below.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700242
243
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200244Basic Management
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700245----------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700246
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700247mlocked pages - pages mapped into a VM_LOCKED VMA - are a class of unevictable
248pages. When such a page has been "noticed" by the memory management subsystem,
249the page is marked with the PG_mlocked flag. This can be manipulated using the
250PageMlocked() functions.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700251
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700252A PG_mlocked page will be placed on the unevictable list when it is added to
253the LRU. Such pages can be "noticed" by memory management in several places:
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700254
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700255 (1) in the mlock()/mlockall() system call handlers;
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700256
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700257 (2) in the mmap() system call handler when mmapping a region with the
258 MAP_LOCKED flag;
259
260 (3) mmapping a region in a task that has called mlockall() with the MCL_FUTURE
261 flag
262
263 (4) in the fault path, if mlocked pages are "culled" in the fault path,
264 and when a VM_LOCKED stack segment is expanded; or
265
266 (5) as mentioned above, in vmscan:shrink_page_list() when attempting to
267 reclaim a page in a VM_LOCKED VMA via try_to_unmap()
268
269all of which result in the VM_LOCKED flag being set for the VMA if it doesn't
270already have it set.
271
272mlocked pages become unlocked and rescued from the unevictable list when:
273
274 (1) mapped in a range unlocked via the munlock()/munlockall() system calls;
275
276 (2) munmap()'d out of the last VM_LOCKED VMA that maps the page, including
277 unmapping at task exit;
278
279 (3) when the page is truncated from the last VM_LOCKED VMA of an mmapped file;
280 or
281
282 (4) before a page is COW'd in a VM_LOCKED VMA.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700283
284
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200285mlock()/mlockall() System Call Handling
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700286---------------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700287
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200288Both [do\_]mlock() and [do\_]mlockall() system call handlers call mlock_fixup()
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700289for each VMA in the range specified by the call. In the case of mlockall(),
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700290this is the entire active address space of the task. Note that mlock_fixup()
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700291is used for both mlocking and munlocking a range of memory. A call to mlock()
292an already VM_LOCKED VMA, or to munlock() a VMA that is not VM_LOCKED is
293treated as a no-op, and mlock_fixup() simply returns.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700294
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700295If the VMA passes some filtering as described in "Filtering Special Vmas"
296below, mlock_fixup() will attempt to merge the VMA with its neighbors or split
297off a subset of the VMA if the range does not cover the entire VMA. Once the
298VMA has been merged or split or neither, mlock_fixup() will call
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700299populate_vma_page_range() to fault in the pages via get_user_pages() and to
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700300mark the pages as mlocked via mlock_vma_page().
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700301
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700302Note that the VMA being mlocked might be mapped with PROT_NONE. In this case,
303get_user_pages() will be unable to fault in the pages. That's okay. If pages
304do end up getting faulted into this VM_LOCKED VMA, we'll handle them in the
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700305fault path or in vmscan.
306
307Also note that a page returned by get_user_pages() could be truncated or
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700308migrated out from under us, while we're trying to mlock it. To detect this,
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700309populate_vma_page_range() checks page_mapping() after acquiring the page lock.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700310If the page is still associated with its mapping, we'll go ahead and call
311mlock_vma_page(). If the mapping is gone, we just unlock the page and move on.
312In the worst case, this will result in a page mapped in a VM_LOCKED VMA
313remaining on a normal LRU list without being PageMlocked(). Again, vmscan will
314detect and cull such pages.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700315
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700316mlock_vma_page() will call TestSetPageMlocked() for each page returned by
317get_user_pages(). We use TestSetPageMlocked() because the page might already
318be mlocked by another task/VMA and we don't want to do extra work. We
319especially do not want to count an mlocked page more than once in the
320statistics. If the page was already mlocked, mlock_vma_page() need do nothing
321more.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700322
323If the page was NOT already mlocked, mlock_vma_page() attempts to isolate the
324page from the LRU, as it is likely on the appropriate active or inactive list
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700325at that time. If the isolate_lru_page() succeeds, mlock_vma_page() will put
326back the page - by calling putback_lru_page() - which will notice that the page
327is now mlocked and divert the page to the zone's unevictable list. If
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700328mlock_vma_page() is unable to isolate the page from the LRU, vmscan will handle
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700329it later if and when it attempts to reclaim the page.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700330
331
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200332Filtering Special VMAs
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700333----------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700334
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700335mlock_fixup() filters several classes of "special" VMAs:
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700336
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -07003371) VMAs with VM_IO or VM_PFNMAP set are skipped entirely. The pages behind
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700338 these mappings are inherently pinned, so we don't need to mark them as
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700339 mlocked. In any case, most of the pages have no struct page in which to so
340 mark the page. Because of this, get_user_pages() will fail for these VMAs,
341 so there is no sense in attempting to visit them.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700342
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -07003432) VMAs mapping hugetlbfs page are already effectively pinned into memory. We
344 neither need nor want to mlock() these pages. However, to preserve the
345 prior behavior of mlock() - before the unevictable/mlock changes -
346 mlock_fixup() will call make_pages_present() in the hugetlbfs VMA range to
347 allocate the huge pages and populate the ptes.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700348
Konstantin Khlebnikov314e51b2012-10-08 16:29:02 -07003493) VMAs with VM_DONTEXPAND are generally userspace mappings of kernel pages,
350 such as the VDSO page, relay channel pages, etc. These pages
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700351 are inherently unevictable and are not managed on the LRU lists.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700352 mlock_fixup() treats these VMAs the same as hugetlbfs VMAs. It calls
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700353 make_pages_present() to populate the ptes.
354
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700355Note that for all of these special VMAs, mlock_fixup() does not set the
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700356VM_LOCKED flag. Therefore, we won't have to deal with them later during
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700357munlock(), munmap() or task exit. Neither does mlock_fixup() account these
358VMAs against the task's "locked_vm".
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700359
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200360.. _munlock_munlockall_handling:
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700361
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200362munlock()/munlockall() System Call Handling
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700363-------------------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700364
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700365The munlock() and munlockall() system calls are handled by the same functions -
366do_mlock[all]() - as the mlock() and mlockall() system calls with the unlock vs
367lock operation indicated by an argument. So, these system calls are also
368handled by mlock_fixup(). Again, if called for an already munlocked VMA,
369mlock_fixup() simply returns. Because of the VMA filtering discussed above,
370VM_LOCKED will not be set in any "special" VMAs. So, these VMAs will be
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700371ignored for munlock.
372
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700373If the VMA is VM_LOCKED, mlock_fixup() again attempts to merge or split off the
374specified range. The range is then munlocked via the function
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700375populate_vma_page_range() - the same function used to mlock a VMA range -
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700376passing a flag to indicate that munlock() is being performed.
377
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700378Because the VMA access protections could have been changed to PROT_NONE after
Hugh Dickins63d6c5a2009-01-06 14:39:38 -0800379faulting in and mlocking pages, get_user_pages() was unreliable for visiting
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700380these pages for munlocking. Because we don't want to leave pages mlocked,
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700381get_user_pages() was enhanced to accept a flag to ignore the permissions when
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700382fetching the pages - all of which should be resident as a result of previous
383mlocking.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700384
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700385For munlock(), populate_vma_page_range() unlocks individual pages by calling
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700386munlock_vma_page(). munlock_vma_page() unconditionally clears the PG_mlocked
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700387flag using TestClearPageMlocked(). As with mlock_vma_page(),
388munlock_vma_page() use the Test*PageMlocked() function to handle the case where
389the page might have already been unlocked by another task. If the page was
390mlocked, munlock_vma_page() updates that zone statistics for the number of
391mlocked pages. Note, however, that at this point we haven't checked whether
392the page is mapped by other VM_LOCKED VMAs.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700393
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700394We can't call try_to_munlock(), the function that walks the reverse map to
395check for other VM_LOCKED VMAs, without first isolating the page from the LRU.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700396try_to_munlock() is a variant of try_to_unmap() and thus requires that the page
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700397not be on an LRU list [more on these below]. However, the call to
398isolate_lru_page() could fail, in which case we couldn't try_to_munlock(). So,
399we go ahead and clear PG_mlocked up front, as this might be the only chance we
400have. If we can successfully isolate the page, we go ahead and
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700401try_to_munlock(), which will restore the PG_mlocked flag and update the zone
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700402page statistics if it finds another VMA holding the page mlocked. If we fail
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700403to isolate the page, we'll have left a potentially mlocked page on the LRU.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700404This is fine, because we'll catch it later if and if vmscan tries to reclaim
405the page. This should be relatively rare.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700406
407
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200408Migrating MLOCKED Pages
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700409-----------------------
410
411A page that is being migrated has been isolated from the LRU lists and is held
412locked across unmapping of the page, updating the page's address space entry
413and copying the contents and state, until the page table entry has been
414replaced with an entry that refers to the new page. Linux supports migration
415of mlocked pages and other unevictable pages. This involves simply moving the
416PG_mlocked and PG_unevictable states from the old page to the new page.
417
418Note that page migration can race with mlocking or munlocking of the same page.
419This has been discussed from the mlock/munlock perspective in the respective
420sections above. Both processes (migration and m[un]locking) hold the page
421locked. This provides the first level of synchronization. Page migration
422zeros out the page_mapping of the old page before unlocking it, so m[un]lock
423can skip these pages by testing the page mapping under page lock.
424
425To complete page migration, we place the new and old pages back onto the LRU
426after dropping the page lock. The "unneeded" page - old page on success, new
427page on failure - will be freed when the reference count held by the migration
428process is released. To ensure that we don't strand pages on the unevictable
429list because of a race between munlock and migration, page migration uses the
430putback_lru_page() function to add migrated pages back to the LRU.
431
432
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200433Compacting MLOCKED Pages
Eric B Munson922c0552015-04-15 16:13:23 -0700434------------------------
435
436The unevictable LRU can be scanned for compactable regions and the default
437behavior is to do so. /proc/sys/vm/compact_unevictable_allowed controls
438this behavior (see Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt). Once scanning of the
439unevictable LRU is enabled, the work of compaction is mostly handled by
440the page migration code and the same work flow as described in MIGRATING
441MLOCKED PAGES will apply.
442
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200443MLOCKING Transparent Huge Pages
Kirill A. Shutemov6fb8ddf2016-07-26 15:25:15 -0700444-------------------------------
445
446A transparent huge page is represented by a single entry on an LRU list.
447Therefore, we can only make unevictable an entire compound page, not
448individual subpages.
449
450If a user tries to mlock() part of a huge page, we want the rest of the
451page to be reclaimable.
452
453We cannot just split the page on partial mlock() as split_huge_page() can
454fail and new intermittent failure mode for the syscall is undesirable.
455
456We handle this by keeping PTE-mapped huge pages on normal LRU lists: the
457PMD on border of VM_LOCKED VMA will be split into PTE table.
458
459This way the huge page is accessible for vmscan. Under memory pressure the
460page will be split, subpages which belong to VM_LOCKED VMAs will be moved
461to unevictable LRU and the rest can be reclaimed.
462
463See also comment in follow_trans_huge_pmd().
Eric B Munson922c0552015-04-15 16:13:23 -0700464
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200465mmap(MAP_LOCKED) System Call Handling
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700466-------------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700467
Masanari Iidadf5cbb22014-03-21 10:04:30 +0900468In addition the mlock()/mlockall() system calls, an application can request
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700469that a region of memory be mlocked supplying the MAP_LOCKED flag to the mmap()
Michal Hocko9b012a22015-06-24 16:57:50 -0700470call. There is one important and subtle difference here, though. mmap() + mlock()
471will fail if the range cannot be faulted in (e.g. because mm_populate fails)
472and returns with ENOMEM while mmap(MAP_LOCKED) will not fail. The mmaped
473area will still have properties of the locked area - aka. pages will not get
474swapped out - but major page faults to fault memory in might still happen.
475
476Furthermore, any mmap() call or brk() call that expands the heap by a
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700477task that has previously called mlockall() with the MCL_FUTURE flag will result
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700478in the newly mapped memory being mlocked. Before the unevictable/mlock
479changes, the kernel simply called make_pages_present() to allocate pages and
480populate the page table.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700481
482To mlock a range of memory under the unevictable/mlock infrastructure, the
483mmap() handler and task address space expansion functions call
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700484populate_vma_page_range() specifying the vma and the address range to mlock.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700485
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700486The callers of populate_vma_page_range() will have already added the memory range
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700487to be mlocked to the task's "locked_vm". To account for filtered VMAs,
Kirill A. Shutemovfc05f562015-04-14 15:44:39 -0700488populate_vma_page_range() returns the number of pages NOT mlocked. All of the
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700489callers then subtract a non-negative return value from the task's locked_vm. A
490negative return value represent an error - for example, from get_user_pages()
491attempting to fault in a VMA with PROT_NONE access. In this case, we leave the
492memory range accounted as locked_vm, as the protections could be changed later
493and pages allocated into that region.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700494
495
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200496munmap()/exit()/exec() System Call Handling
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700497-------------------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700498
499When unmapping an mlocked region of memory, whether by an explicit call to
500munmap() or via an internal unmap from exit() or exec() processing, we must
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700501munlock the pages if we're removing the last VM_LOCKED VMA that maps the pages.
Hugh Dickins63d6c5a2009-01-06 14:39:38 -0800502Before the unevictable/mlock changes, mlocking did not mark the pages in any
503way, so unmapping them required no processing.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700504
505To munlock a range of memory under the unevictable/mlock infrastructure, the
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700506munmap() handler and task address space call tear down function
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700507munlock_vma_pages_all(). The name reflects the observation that one always
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700508specifies the entire VMA range when munlock()ing during unmap of a region.
509Because of the VMA filtering when mlocking() regions, only "normal" VMAs that
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700510actually contain mlocked pages will be passed to munlock_vma_pages_all().
511
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700512munlock_vma_pages_all() clears the VM_LOCKED VMA flag and, like mlock_fixup()
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700513for the munlock case, calls __munlock_vma_pages_range() to walk the page table
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700514for the VMA's memory range and munlock_vma_page() each resident page mapped by
515the VMA. This effectively munlocks the page, only if this is the last
516VM_LOCKED VMA that maps the page.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700517
518
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700519try_to_unmap()
520--------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700521
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700522Pages can, of course, be mapped into multiple VMAs. Some of these VMAs may
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700523have VM_LOCKED flag set. It is possible for a page mapped into one or more
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700524VM_LOCKED VMAs not to have the PG_mlocked flag set and therefore reside on one
525of the active or inactive LRU lists. This could happen if, for example, a task
526in the process of munlocking the page could not isolate the page from the LRU.
527As a result, vmscan/shrink_page_list() might encounter such a page as described
528in section "vmscan's handling of unevictable pages". To handle this situation,
529try_to_unmap() checks for VM_LOCKED VMAs while it is walking a page's reverse
530map.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700531
532try_to_unmap() is always called, by either vmscan for reclaim or for page
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700533migration, with the argument page locked and isolated from the LRU. Separate
Hugh Dickinsb87537d9e2015-11-05 18:49:33 -0800534functions handle anonymous and mapped file and KSM pages, as these types of
535pages have different reverse map lookup mechanisms, with different locking.
536In each case, whether rmap_walk_anon() or rmap_walk_file() or rmap_walk_ksm(),
537it will call try_to_unmap_one() for every VMA which might contain the page.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700538
Hugh Dickinsb87537d9e2015-11-05 18:49:33 -0800539When trying to reclaim, if try_to_unmap_one() finds the page in a VM_LOCKED
540VMA, it will then mlock the page via mlock_vma_page() instead of unmapping it,
541and return SWAP_MLOCK to indicate that the page is unevictable: and the scan
542stops there.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700543
Hugh Dickinsb87537d9e2015-11-05 18:49:33 -0800544mlock_vma_page() is called while holding the page table's lock (in addition
545to the page lock, and the rmap lock): to serialize against concurrent mlock or
546munlock or munmap system calls, mm teardown (munlock_vma_pages_all), reclaim,
547holepunching, and truncation of file pages and their anonymous COWed pages.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700548
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700549
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200550try_to_munlock() Reverse Map Scan
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700551---------------------------------
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700552
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200553.. warning::
554 [!] TODO/FIXME: a better name might be page_mlocked() - analogous to the
555 page_referenced() reverse map walker.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700556
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200557When munlock_vma_page() [see section :ref:`munlock()/munlockall() System Call
558Handling <munlock_munlockall_handling>` above] tries to munlock a
559page, it needs to determine whether or not the page is mapped by any
560VM_LOCKED VMA without actually attempting to unmap all PTEs from the
561page. For this purpose, the unevictable/mlock infrastructure
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700562introduced a variant of try_to_unmap() called try_to_munlock().
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700563
564try_to_munlock() calls the same functions as try_to_unmap() for anonymous and
Hugh Dickinsb87537d9e2015-11-05 18:49:33 -0800565mapped file and KSM pages with a flag argument specifying unlock versus unmap
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700566processing. Again, these functions walk the respective reverse maps looking
Hugh Dickins7a142392015-11-05 18:49:30 -0800567for VM_LOCKED VMAs. When such a VMA is found, as in the try_to_unmap() case,
Hugh Dickinsb87537d9e2015-11-05 18:49:33 -0800568the functions mlock the page via mlock_vma_page() and return SWAP_MLOCK. This
569undoes the pre-clearing of the page's PG_mlocked done by munlock_vma_page.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700570
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700571Note that try_to_munlock()'s reverse map walk must visit every VMA in a page's
572reverse map to determine that a page is NOT mapped into any VM_LOCKED VMA.
Hugh Dickinsb87537d9e2015-11-05 18:49:33 -0800573However, the scan can terminate when it encounters a VM_LOCKED VMA.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700574Although try_to_munlock() might be called a great many times when munlocking a
575large region or tearing down a large address space that has been mlocked via
576mlockall(), overall this is a fairly rare event.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700577
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700578
Mike Rapoporta5e4da92018-03-21 21:22:42 +0200579Page Reclaim in shrink_*_list()
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700580-------------------------------
581
582shrink_active_list() culls any obviously unevictable pages - i.e.
Hugh Dickins39b5f292012-10-08 16:33:18 -0700583!page_evictable(page) - diverting these to the unevictable list.
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700584However, shrink_active_list() only sees unevictable pages that made it onto the
585active/inactive lru lists. Note that these pages do not have PageUnevictable
586set - otherwise they would be on the unevictable list and shrink_active_list
587would never see them.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700588
589Some examples of these unevictable pages on the LRU lists are:
590
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700591 (1) ramfs pages that have been placed on the LRU lists when first allocated.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700592
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700593 (2) SHM_LOCK'd shared memory pages. shmctl(SHM_LOCK) does not attempt to
594 allocate or fault in the pages in the shared memory region. This happens
595 when an application accesses the page the first time after SHM_LOCK'ing
596 the segment.
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700597
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700598 (3) mlocked pages that could not be isolated from the LRU and moved to the
599 unevictable list in mlock_vma_page().
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700600
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700601shrink_inactive_list() also diverts any unevictable pages that it finds on the
602inactive lists to the appropriate zone's unevictable list.
603
604shrink_inactive_list() should only see SHM_LOCK'd pages that became SHM_LOCK'd
605after shrink_active_list() had moved them to the inactive list, or pages mapped
606into VM_LOCKED VMAs that munlock_vma_page() couldn't isolate from the LRU to
607recheck via try_to_munlock(). shrink_inactive_list() won't notice the latter,
608but will pass on to shrink_page_list().
Lee Schermerhornfa07e782008-10-18 20:26:47 -0700609
610shrink_page_list() again culls obviously unevictable pages that it could
Hugh Dickins63d6c5a2009-01-06 14:39:38 -0800611encounter for similar reason to shrink_inactive_list(). Pages mapped into
David Howellsc24b7202009-04-13 14:40:01 -0700612VM_LOCKED VMAs but without PG_mlocked set will make it all the way to
Hugh Dickins63d6c5a2009-01-06 14:39:38 -0800613try_to_unmap(). shrink_page_list() will divert them to the unevictable list
614when try_to_unmap() returns SWAP_MLOCK, as discussed above.