`zs_compact_control' accounts the number of migrated objects but it has
a limited lifespan -- we lose it as soon as zs_compaction() returns back
to zram. It worked fine, because (a) zram had it's own counter of
migrated objects and (b) only zram could trigger compaction. However,
this does not work for automatic pool compaction (not issued by zram).
To account objects migrated during auto-compaction (issued by the
shrinker) we need to store this number in zs_pool.
Define a new `struct zs_pool_stats' structure to keep zs_pool's stats
there. It provides only `num_migrated', as of this writing, but it
surely can be extended.
A new zsmalloc zs_pool_stats() symbol exports zs_pool's stats back to
caller.
Use zs_pool_stats() in zram and remove `num_migrated' from zram_stats.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Suggested-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
[ Original patch from Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org> ]
Commit ba6b17d68c ("zram: fix umount-reset_store-mount race
condition") introduced bdev->bd_mutex to protect a race between mount
and reset. At that time, we don't have dynamic zram-add/remove feature
so it was okay.
However, as we introduce dynamic device feature, bd_mutex became
trouble.
CPU 0
echo 1 > /sys/block/zram<id>/reset
-> kernfs->s_active(A)
-> zram:reset_store->bd_mutex(B)
CPU 1
echo <id> > /sys/class/zram/zram-remove
->zram:zram_remove: bd_mutex(B)
-> sysfs_remove_group
-> kernfs->s_active(A)
IOW, AB -> BA deadlock
The reason we are holding bd_mutex for zram_remove is to prevent
any incoming open /dev/zram[0-9]. Otherwise, we could remove zram
others already have opened. But it causes above deadlock problem.
To fix the problem, this patch overrides block_device.open and
it returns -EBUSY if zram asserts he claims zram to reset so any
incoming open will be failed so we don't need to hold bd_mutex
for zram_remove ayn more.
This patch is to prepare for zram-add/remove feature.
[sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com: simplify reset_store()]
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Limiting the number of zram devices to 32 (default max_num_devices value)
is confusing, let's drop it. A user with 2TB or 4TB of RAM, for example,
can request as many devices as he can handle.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Now that zsmalloc supports compaction, zram can use it. For the first
step, this patch exports compact knob via sysfs so user can do compaction
via "echo 1 > /sys/block/zram0/compact".
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Juneho Choi <juno.choi@lge.com>
Cc: Gunho Lee <gunho.lee@lge.com>
Cc: Luigi Semenzato <semenzato@google.com>
Cc: Dan Streetman <ddstreet@ieee.org>
Cc: Seth Jennings <sjennings@variantweb.net>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
`struct zram' contains both `struct gendisk' and `struct request_queue'.
the latter can be deleted, because zram->disk carries ->queue pointer, and
->queue carries zram pointer:
create_device()
zram->queue->queuedata = zram
zram->disk->queue = zram->queue
zram->disk->private_data = zram
so zram->queue is not needed, we can access all necessary data anyway.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Admin could reset zram during I/O operation going on so we have used
zram->init_lock as read-side lock in I/O path to prevent sudden zram
meta freeing.
However, the init_lock is really troublesome. We can't do call
zram_meta_alloc under init_lock due to lockdep splat because
zram_rw_page is one of the function under reclaim path and hold it as
read_lock while other places in process context hold it as write_lock.
So, we have used allocation out of the lock to avoid lockdep warn but
it's not good for readability and fainally, I met another lockdep splat
between init_lock and cpu_hotplug from kmem_cache_destroy during working
zsmalloc compaction. :(
Yes, the ideal is to remove horrible init_lock of zram in rw path. This
patch removes it in rw path and instead, add atomic refcount for meta
lifetime management and completion to free meta in process context.
It's important to free meta in process context because some of resource
destruction needs mutex lock, which could be held if we releases the
resource in reclaim context so it's deadlock, again.
As a bonus, we could remove init_done check in rw path because
zram_meta_get will do a role for it, instead.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Ganesh Mahendran <opensource.ganesh@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
In struct zram_table_entry, the element *value* contains obj size and obj
zram flags. Bit 0 to bit (ZRAM_FLAG_SHIFT - 1) represent obj size, and
bit ZRAM_FLAG_SHIFT to the highest bit of unsigned long represent obj
zram_flags. So the first zram flag(ZRAM_ZERO) should be from
ZRAM_FLAG_SHIFT instead of (ZRAM_FLAG_SHIFT + 1).
This patch fixes this cosmetic issue.
Also fix a typo, "page in now accessed" -> "page is now accessed"
Signed-off-by: Mahendran Ganesh <opensource.ganesh@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Weijie Yang <weijie.yang@samsung.com>
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Normally, zram user could get maximum memory usage zram consumed via
polling mem_used_total with sysfs in userspace.
But it has a critical problem because user can miss peak memory usage
during update inverval of polling. For avoiding that, user should poll it
with shorter interval(ie, 0.0000000001s) with mlocking to avoid page fault
delay when memory pressure is heavy. It would be troublesome.
This patch adds new knob "mem_used_max" so user could see the maximum
memory usage easily via reading the knob and reset it via "echo 0 >
/sys/block/zram0/mem_used_max".
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Dan Streetman <ddstreet@ieee.org>
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: <juno.choi@lge.com>
Cc: <seungho1.park@lge.com>
Cc: Luigi Semenzato <semenzato@google.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Cc: Seth Jennings <sjennings@variantweb.net>
Reviewed-by: David Horner <ds2horner@gmail.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Since zram has no control feature to limit memory usage, it makes hard to
manage system memrory.
This patch adds new knob "mem_limit" via sysfs to set up the a limit so
that zram could fail allocation once it reaches the limit.
In addition, user could change the limit in runtime so that he could
manage the memory more dynamically.
Initial state is no limit so it doesn't break old behavior.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix typo, per Sergey]
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Dan Streetman <ddstreet@ieee.org>
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: <juno.choi@lge.com>
Cc: <seungho1.park@lge.com>
Cc: Luigi Semenzato <semenzato@google.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Cc: Seth Jennings <sjennings@variantweb.net>
Cc: David Horner <ds2horner@gmail.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Since we allocate a temporary buffer in zram_bvec_read to handle partial
page operations in commit 924bd88d70 ("Staging: zram: allow partial
page operations"), our ->failed_reads value may be incorrect as we do
not increase its value when failing to allocate the temporary buffer.
Let's fix this issue and correct the annotation of failed_reads.
Signed-off-by: Chao Yu <chao2.yu@samsung.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Acked-by: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Currently, we use a rwlock tb_lock to protect concurrent access to the
whole zram meta table. However, according to the actual access model,
there is only a small chance for upper user to access the same
table[index], so the current lock granularity is too big.
The idea of optimization is to change the lock granularity from whole
meta table to per table entry (table -> table[index]), so that we can
protect concurrent access to the same table[index], meanwhile allow the
maximum concurrency.
With this in mind, several kinds of locks which could be used as a
per-entry lock were tested and compared:
Test environment:
x86-64 Intel Core2 Q8400, system memory 4GB, Ubuntu 12.04,
kernel v3.15.0-rc3 as base, zram with 4 max_comp_streams LZO.
iozone test:
iozone -t 4 -R -r 16K -s 200M -I +Z
(1GB zram with ext4 filesystem, take the average of 10 tests, KB/s)
Test base CAS spinlock rwlock bit_spinlock
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Initial write 1381094 1425435 1422860 1423075 1421521
Rewrite 1529479 1641199 1668762 1672855 1654910
Read 8468009 11324979 11305569 11117273 10997202
Re-read 8467476 11260914 11248059 11145336 10906486
Reverse Read 6821393 8106334 8282174 8279195 8109186
Stride read 7191093 8994306 9153982 8961224 9004434
Random read 7156353 8957932 9167098 8980465 8940476
Mixed workload 4172747 5680814 5927825 5489578 5972253
Random write 1483044 1605588 1594329 1600453 1596010
Pwrite 1276644 1303108 1311612 1314228 1300960
Pread 4324337 4632869 4618386 4457870 4500166
To enhance the possibility of access the same table[index] concurrently,
set zram a small disksize(10MB) and let threads run with large loop
count.
fio test:
fio --bs=32k --randrepeat=1 --randseed=100 --refill_buffers
--scramble_buffers=1 --direct=1 --loops=3000 --numjobs=4
--filename=/dev/zram0 --name=seq-write --rw=write --stonewall
--name=seq-read --rw=read --stonewall --name=seq-readwrite
--rw=rw --stonewall --name=rand-readwrite --rw=randrw --stonewall
(10MB zram raw block device, take the average of 10 tests, KB/s)
Test base CAS spinlock rwlock bit_spinlock
-------------------------------------------------------------
seq-write 933789 999357 1003298 995961 1001958
seq-read 5634130 6577930 6380861 6243912 6230006
seq-rw 1405687 1638117 1640256 1633903 1634459
rand-rw 1386119 1614664 1617211 1609267 1612471
All the optimization methods show a higher performance than the base,
however, it is hard to say which method is the most appropriate.
On the other hand, zram is mostly used on small embedded system, so we
don't want to increase any memory footprint.
This patch pick the bit_spinlock method, pack object size and page_flag
into an unsigned long table.value, so as to not increase any memory
overhead on both 32-bit and 64-bit system.
On the third hand, even though different kinds of locks have different
performances, we can ignore this difference, because: if zram is used as
zram swapfile, the swap subsystem can prevent concurrent access to the
same swapslot; if zram is used as zram-blk for set up filesystem on it,
the upper filesystem and the page cache also prevent concurrent access
of the same block mostly. So we can ignore the different performances
among locks.
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Weijie Yang <weijie.yang@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Andrew Morton has recently noted that `struct table' actually represents
table entry and, thus, should be renamed. Rename to `zram_table_entry'.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Cc: Weijie Yang <weijie.yang@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Existing zram (zcomp) implementation has only one compression stream
(buffer and algorithm private part), so in order to prevent data
corruption only one write (compress operation) can use this compression
stream, forcing all concurrent write operations to wait for stream lock
to be released. This patch changes zcomp to keep a compression streams
list of user-defined size (via sysfs device attr). Each write operation
still exclusively holds compression stream, the difference is that we
can have N write operations (depending on size of streams list)
executing in parallel. See TEST section later in commit message for
performance data.
Introduce struct zcomp_strm_multi and a set of functions to manage
zcomp_strm stream access. zcomp_strm_multi has a list of idle
zcomp_strm structs, spinlock to protect idle list and wait queue, making
it possible to perform parallel compressions.
The following set of functions added:
- zcomp_strm_multi_find()/zcomp_strm_multi_release()
find and release a compression stream, implement required locking
- zcomp_strm_multi_create()/zcomp_strm_multi_destroy()
create and destroy zcomp_strm_multi
zcomp ->strm_find() and ->strm_release() callbacks are set during
initialisation to zcomp_strm_multi_find()/zcomp_strm_multi_release()
correspondingly.
Each time zcomp issues a zcomp_strm_multi_find() call, the following set
of operations performed:
- spin lock strm_lock
- if idle list is not empty, remove zcomp_strm from idle list, spin
unlock and return zcomp stream pointer to caller
- if idle list is empty, current adds itself to wait queue. it will be
awaken by zcomp_strm_multi_release() caller.
zcomp_strm_multi_release():
- spin lock strm_lock
- add zcomp stream to idle list
- spin unlock, wake up sleeper
Minchan Kim reported that spinlock-based locking scheme has demonstrated
a severe perfomance regression for single compression stream case,
comparing to mutex-based (see https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/2/18/16)
base spinlock mutex
==Initial write ==Initial write ==Initial write
records: 5 records: 5 records: 5
avg: 1642424.35 avg: 699610.40 avg: 1655583.71
std: 39890.95(2.43%) std: 232014.19(33.16%) std: 52293.96
max: 1690170.94 max: 1163473.45 max: 1697164.75
min: 1568669.52 min: 573429.88 min: 1553410.23
==Rewrite ==Rewrite ==Rewrite
records: 5 records: 5 records: 5
avg: 1611775.39 avg: 501406.64 avg: 1684419.11
std: 17144.58(1.06%) std: 15354.41(3.06%) std: 18367.42
max: 1641800.95 max: 531356.78 max: 1706445.84
min: 1593515.27 min: 488817.78 min: 1655335.73
When only one compression stream available, mutex with spin on owner
tends to perform much better than frequent wait_event()/wake_up(). This
is why single stream implemented as a special case with mutex locking.
Introduce and document zram device attribute max_comp_streams. This
attr shows and stores current zcomp's max number of zcomp streams
(max_strm). Extend zcomp's zcomp_create() with `max_strm' parameter.
`max_strm' limits the number of zcomp_strm structs in compression
backend's idle list (max_comp_streams).
max_comp_streams used during initialisation as follows:
-- passing to zcomp_create() max_strm equals to 1 will initialise zcomp
using single compression stream zcomp_strm_single (mutex-based locking).
-- passing to zcomp_create() max_strm greater than 1 will initialise zcomp
using multi compression stream zcomp_strm_multi (spinlock-based locking).
default max_comp_streams value is 1, meaning that zram with single stream
will be initialised.
Later patch will introduce configuration knob to change max_comp_streams
on already initialised and used zcomp.
TEST
iozone -t 3 -R -r 16K -s 60M -I +Z
test base 1 strm (mutex) 3 strm (spinlock)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Initial write 589286.78 583518.39 718011.05
Rewrite 604837.97 596776.38 1515125.72
Random write 584120.11 595714.58 1388850.25
Pwrite 535731.17 541117.38 739295.27
Fwrite 1418083.88 1478612.72 1484927.06
Usage example:
set max_comp_streams to 4
echo 4 > /sys/block/zram0/max_comp_streams
show current max_comp_streams (default value is 1).
cat /sys/block/zram0/max_comp_streams
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This is a preparation patch for stats code duplication removal.
1) use atomic64_t for `pages_zero' and `pages_stored' zram stats.
2) `compr_size' and `pages_zero' struct zram_stats members did not
follow the existing device attr naming scheme: zram_stats.ATTR has
ATTR_show() function. rename them:
-- compr_size -> compr_data_size
-- pages_zero -> zero_pages
Minchan Kim's note:
If we really have trouble with atomic stat operation, we could
change it with percpu_counter so that it could solve atomic overhead and
unnecessary memory space by introducing unsigned long instead of 64bit
atomic_t.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Remove `good' and `bad' compressed sub-requests stats. RW request may
cause a number of RW sub-requests. zram used to account `good' compressed
sub-queries (with compressed size less than 50% of original size), `bad'
compressed sub-queries (with compressed size greater that 75% of original
size), leaving sub-requests with compression size between 50% and 75% of
original size not accounted and not reported. zram already accounts each
sub-request's compression size so we can calculate real device compression
ratio.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Introduce init_done() helper function which allows us to drop `init_done'
struct zram member. init_done() uses the fact that ->init_done == 1
equals to ->meta != NULL.
Signed-off-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Commit a0c516cbfc ("zram: don't grab mutex in zram_slot_free_noity")
introduced free request pending code to avoid scheduling by mutex under
spinlock and it was a mess which made code lenghty and increased
overhead.
Now, we don't need zram->lock any more to free slot so this patch
reverts it and then, tb_lock should protect it.
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Tested-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Currently, the zram table is protected by zram->lock but it's rather
coarse-grained lock and it makes hard for scalibility.
Let's use own rwlock instead of depending on zram->lock. This patch
adds new locking so obviously, it would make slow but this patch is just
prepartion for removing coarse-grained rw_semaphore(ie, zram->lock)
which is hurdle about zram scalability.
Final patch in this patchset series will remove the lock from read-path
and change rw_semaphore with mutex in write path. With bonus, we could
drop pending slot free mess in next patch.
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Tested-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Jerome Marchand <jmarchan@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Add my copyright to the zram source code which I maintain.
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Remove the old private compcache project address so upcoming patches
should be sent to LKML because we Linux kernel community will take care.
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Zram has lived in staging for a LONG LONG time and have been
fixed/improved by many contributors so code is clean and stable now. Of
course, there are lots of product using zram in real practice.
The major TV companys have used zram as swap since two years ago and
recently our production team released android smart phone with zram
which is used as swap, too and recently Android Kitkat start to use zram
for small memory smart phone. And there was a report Google released
their ChromeOS with zram, too and cyanogenmod have been used zram long
time ago. And I heard some disto have used zram block device for tmpfs.
In addition, I saw many report from many other peoples. For example,
Lubuntu start to use it.
The benefit of zram is very clear. With my experience, one of the
benefit was to remove jitter of video application with backgroud memory
pressure. It would be effect of efficient memory usage by compression
but more issue is whether swap is there or not in the system. Recent
mobile platforms have used JAVA so there are many anonymous pages. But
embedded system normally are reluctant to use eMMC or SDCard as swap
because there is wear-leveling and latency issues so if we do not use
swap, it means we can't reclaim anoymous pages and at last, we could
encounter OOM kill. :(
Although we have real storage as swap, it was a problem, too. Because
it sometime ends up making system very unresponsible caused by slow swap
storage performance.
Quote from Luigi on Google
"Since Chrome OS was mentioned: the main reason why we don't use swap
to a disk (rotating or SSD) is because it doesn't degrade gracefully
and leads to a bad interactive experience. Generally we prefer to
manage RAM at a higher level, by transparently killing and restarting
processes. But we noticed that zram is fast enough to be competitive
with the latter, and it lets us make more efficient use of the
available RAM. " and he announced.
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mm/msg57717.html
Other uses case is to use zram for block device. Zram is block device
so anyone can format the block device and mount on it so some guys on
the internet start zram as /var/tmp.
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-838198-start-0.html
Let's promote zram and enhance/maintain it instead of removing.
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
Acked-by: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
Cc: Bob Liu <bob.liu@oracle.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Luigi Semenzato <semenzato@google.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Seth Jennings <sjenning@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
