mirror_zfs/module
Brian Behlendorf 302f753f16 Integrate ARC more tightly with Linux
Under Solaris the ARC was designed to stay one step ahead of the
VM subsystem.  It would attempt to recognize low memory situtions
before they occured and evict data from the cache.  It would also
make assessments about if there was enough free memory to perform
a specific operation.

This was all possible because Solaris exposes a fairly decent
view of the memory state of the system to other kernel threads.
Linux on the other hand does not make this information easily
available.  To avoid extensive modifications to the ARC the SPL
attempts to provide these same interfaces.  While this works it
is not ideal and problems can arise when the ARC and Linux have
different ideas about when your out of memory.  This has manifested
itself in the past as a spinning arc_reclaim_thread.

This patch abandons the emulated Solaris interfaces in favor of
the prefered Linux interface.  That means moving the bulk of the
memory reclaim logic out of the arc_reclaim_thread and in to the
evict driven shrinker callback.  The Linux VM will call this
function when it needs memory.  The ARC is then responsible for
attempting to free the requested amount of memory if possible.

Several interfaces have been modified to accomidate this approach,
however the basic user space implementation remains the same.
The following changes almost exclusively just apply to the kernel
implementation.

* Removed the hdr_recl() reclaim callback which is redundant
  with the broader arc_shrinker_func().

* Reduced arc_grow_retry to 5 seconds from 60.  This is now used
  internally in the ARC with arc_no_grow to indicate that direct
  reclaim was recently performed.  This typically indicates a
  rapid change in memory demands which the kswapd threads were
  unable to keep ahead of.  As long as direct reclaim is happening
  once every 5 seconds arc growth will be paused to avoid further
  contributing to the existing memory pressure.  The more common
  indirect reclaim paths will not set arc_no_grow.

* arc_shrink() has been extended to take the number of bytes by
  which arc_c should be reduced.  This allows for a more granual
  reduction of the arc target.  Since the kernel provides a
  reclaim value to the arc_shrinker_func() this value is used
  instead of 1<<arc_shrink_shift.

* arc_reclaim_needed() has been removed.  It was used to determine
  if the system was under memory pressure and relied extensively
  on Solaris specific VM interfaces.  In most case the new code
  just checks arc_no_grow which indicates that within the last
  arc_grow_retry seconds direct memory reclaim occurred.

* arc_memory_throttle() has been updated to always include the
  amount of evictable memory (arc and page cache) in its free
  space calculations.  This space is largely available in most
  call paths due to direct memory reclaim.

* The Solaris pageout code was also removed to avoid confusion.
  It has always been disabled due to proc_pageout being defined
  as NULL in the Linux port.

Signed-off-by: Prakash Surya <surya1@llnl.gov>
Signed-off-by: Brian Behlendorf <behlendorf1@llnl.gov>
2012-04-30 10:03:05 -07:00
..
avl Support custom build directories and move includes 2010-09-08 12:38:56 -07:00
nvpair Implement SA based xattrs 2011-11-28 15:45:51 -08:00
unicode Support custom build directories and move includes 2010-09-08 12:38:56 -07:00
zcommon Support ashift=13 for 8KB SSD block sizes 2012-02-13 12:25:27 -08:00
zfs Integrate ARC more tightly with Linux 2012-04-30 10:03:05 -07:00
zpios Linux 2.6.36 compat, use fops->unlocked_ioctl() 2010-11-10 17:01:08 -08:00
.gitignore Add .gitignore files to exclude build products 2010-01-08 11:35:17 -08:00
Makefile.in Fix 'make install' overly broad 'rm' 2011-07-20 09:38:51 -07:00