From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:25:55 +0200 From: Nick Piggin Subject: [patch] mm: dont mark_page_accessed in fault path Message-ID: <20081021072555.GA3237@wotan.suse.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Andrew Morton , Linux Memory Management List , Johannes Weiner , Rik van Riel List-ID: Doing a mark_page_accessed at fault-time, then doing SetPageReferenced at unmap-time if the pte is young has a number of problems. mark_page_accessed is supposed to be roughly the equivalent of a young pte for unmapped references. Unfortunately it doesn't come with any context: after being called, reclaim doesn't know who or why the page was touched. So calling mark_page_accessed not only adds extra lru or PG_referenced manipulations for pages that are already going to have pte_young ptes anyway, but it also adds these references which are difficult to work with from the context of vma specific references (eg. MADV_SEQUENTIAL pte_young may not wish to contribute to the page being referenced). Then, simply doing SetPageReferenced when zapping a pte and finding it is young, is not a really good solution either. SetPageReferenced does not correctly promote the page to the active list for example. So after removing mark_page_accessed from the fault path, several mmap()+touch+munmap() would have a very different result from several read(2) calls for example, which is not really desirable. Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin --- Index: linux-2.6/mm/memory.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/mm/memory.c +++ linux-2.6/mm/memory.c @@ -758,7 +758,7 @@ static unsigned long zap_pte_range(struc if (pte_dirty(ptent)) set_page_dirty(page); if (pte_young(ptent)) - SetPageReferenced(page); + mark_page_accessed(page); file_rss--; } page_remove_rmap(page, vma); Index: linux-2.6/mm/filemap.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/mm/filemap.c +++ linux-2.6/mm/filemap.c @@ -1530,7 +1530,6 @@ retry_find: /* * Found the page and have a reference on it. */ - mark_page_accessed(page); ra->prev_pos = (loff_t)page->index << PAGE_CACHE_SHIFT; vmf->page = page; return ret | VM_FAULT_LOCKED; -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org