hugetlb: introduce nr_overcommit_hugepages sysctl

hugetlb: introduce nr_overcommit_hugepages sysctl

While examining the code to support /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_dynamic_pool, I
became convinced that having a boolean sysctl was insufficient:

1) To support per-node control of hugepages, I have previously submitted
patches to add a sysfs attribute related to nr_hugepages. However, with
a boolean global value and per-mount quota enforcement constraining the
dynamic pool, adding corresponding control of the dynamic pool on a
per-node basis seems inconsistent to me.

2) Administration of the hugetlb dynamic pool with multiple hugetlbfs
mount points is, arguably, more arduous than it needs to be. Each quota
would need to be set separately, and the sum would need to be monitored.

To ease the administration, and to help make the way for per-node
control of the static & dynamic hugepage pool, I added a separate
sysctl, nr_overcommit_hugepages. This value serves as a high watermark
for the overall hugepage pool, while nr_hugepages serves as a low
watermark. The boolean sysctl can then be removed, as the condition

	nr_overcommit_hugepages > 0

indicates the same administrative setting as

	hugetlb_dynamic_pool == 1

Quotas still serve as local enforcement of the size of the pool on a
per-mount basis.

A few caveats:

1) There is a race whereby the global surplus huge page counter is
incremented before a hugepage has allocated. Another process could then
try grow the pool, and fail to convert a surplus huge page to a normal
huge page and instead allocate a fresh huge page. I believe this is
benign, as no memory is leaked (the actual pages are still tracked
correctly) and the counters won't go out of sync.

2) Shrinking the static pool while a surplus is in effect will allow the
number of surplus huge pages to exceed the overcommit value. As long as
this condition holds, however, no more surplus huge pages will be
allowed on the system until one of the two sysctls are increased
sufficiently, or the surplus huge pages go out of use and are freed.

Successfully tested on x86_64 with the current libhugetlbfs snapshot,
modified to use the new sysctl.

Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Adam Litke <agl@us.ibm.com>
Cc: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
index 8ac51714b08..b85a1282605 100644
--- a/kernel/sysctl.c
+++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
@@ -912,6 +912,14 @@ static struct ctl_table vm_table[] = {
 		.mode		= 0644,
 		.proc_handler	= &proc_dointvec,
 	},
+	{
+		.ctl_name	= CTL_UNNUMBERED,
+		.procname	= "nr_overcommit_hugepages",
+		.data		= &nr_overcommit_huge_pages,
+		.maxlen		= sizeof(nr_overcommit_huge_pages),
+		.mode		= 0644,
+		.proc_handler	= &proc_doulongvec_minmax,
+	},
 #endif
 	{
 		.ctl_name	= VM_LOWMEM_RESERVE_RATIO,