From: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
To: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Freeing page flags
Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 21:54:59 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <Yn10Iz1mJX1Mu1rv@casper.infradead.org> (raw)
The LWN writeup [1] on merging the MGLRU reminded me that I need to send
out a plan for removing page flags that we can do without.
1. PG_error. It's basically useless. If the page was read successfully,
PG_uptodate is set. If not, PG_uptodate is clear. The page cache
doesn't use PG_error. Some filesystems do, and we need to transition
them away from using it.
2. PG_private. This tells us whether we have anything stored at
page->private. We can just check if page->private is NULL or not.
No need to have this extra bit. Again, there may be some filesystems
that are a bit wonky here, but I'm sure they're fixable.
3. PG_mappedtodisk. This is really only used by the buffer cache.
Once the filesystems that use bufferheads have been converted, this can
go away.
4. I think I can also consolidate PG_slab and PG_reserved into a "single
bit" (not really, but change the encoding so that effectively they only
take a single bit).
That gives us 4 bits back, which should relieve the pressure on page flag
bits for a while. I have Thoughts on PG_private_2 and PG_owner_priv_1,
as well as a suspicion that not all combinations of referenced, lru,
active, workingset, reclaim and unevictable are possible, and there
might be scope for a better encoding. But I don't know that we need to
do that work; gaining back 4 bits is already a Big Deal.
I'm slowly doing the PG_private transition as part of the folio work.
For example, eagle eyed reviewers may have spotted that there is no
folio_has_buffers(). Converted code calls folio_buffers() and checks
if it's NULL. Help from filesystem maintainers on removing the uses of
PG_error gratefully appreciated.
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/894859/
next reply other threads:[~2022-05-12 20:55 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-05-12 20:54 Matthew Wilcox [this message]
2022-05-13 2:41 ` Josef Bacik
2022-05-13 3:39 ` Matthew Wilcox
2022-05-13 9:40 ` Luís Henriques
2022-05-13 12:53 ` Matthew Wilcox
2022-05-13 13:18 ` Luís Henriques
2022-05-13 13:21 ` Jeff Layton
2022-05-13 13:38 ` Matthew Wilcox
2022-05-13 13:57 ` Jeff Layton
2022-05-17 0:34 ` Xiubo Li
2022-05-13 13:17 ` Josef Bacik
2022-05-13 3:46 ` Yu Zhao
2022-05-14 6:10 ` Eric Biggers
2022-05-23 6:38 ` Mike Rapoport
2022-06-10 17:39 ` David Hildenbrand
2022-05-30 16:54 ` David Hildenbrand
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