diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/sysctl')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt | 56 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | 62 |
2 files changed, 90 insertions, 28 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt index e55124e7c40..c14374e7177 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt @@ -75,8 +75,10 @@ show up in /proc/sys/kernel: - shmall - shmmax [ sysv ipc ] - shmmni +- softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace - stop-a [ SPARC only ] - sysrq ==> Documentation/sysrq.txt +- sysctl_writes_strict - tainted - threads-max - unknown_nmi_panic @@ -317,13 +319,15 @@ for more than this value report a warning. This file shows up if CONFIG_DETECT_HUNG_TASK is enabled. 0: means infinite timeout - no checking done. +Possible values to set are in range {0..LONG_MAX/HZ}. ============================================================== -hung_task_warning: +hung_task_warnings: The maximum number of warnings to report. During a check interval -When this value is reached, no more the warnings will be reported. +if a hung task is detected, this value is decreased by 1. +When this value reaches 0, no more warnings will be reported. This file shows up if CONFIG_DETECT_HUNG_TASK is enabled. -1: report an infinite number of warnings. @@ -441,8 +445,7 @@ feature should be disabled. Otherwise, if the system overhead from the feature is too high then the rate the kernel samples for NUMA hinting faults may be controlled by the numa_balancing_scan_period_min_ms, numa_balancing_scan_delay_ms, numa_balancing_scan_period_max_ms, -numa_balancing_scan_size_mb, numa_balancing_settle_count sysctls and -numa_balancing_migrate_deferred. +numa_balancing_scan_size_mb, and numa_balancing_settle_count sysctls. ============================================================== @@ -483,13 +486,6 @@ rate for each task. numa_balancing_scan_size_mb is how many megabytes worth of pages are scanned for a given scan. -numa_balancing_migrate_deferred is how many page migrations get skipped -unconditionally, after a page migration is skipped because a page is shared -with other tasks. This reduces page migration overhead, and determines -how much stronger the "move task near its memory" policy scheduler becomes, -versus the "move memory near its task" memory management policy, for workloads -with shared memory. - ============================================================== osrelease, ostype & version: @@ -768,6 +764,42 @@ without users and with a dead originative process will be destroyed. ============================================================== +sysctl_writes_strict: + +Control how file position affects the behavior of updating sysctl values +via the /proc/sys interface: + + -1 - Legacy per-write sysctl value handling, with no printk warnings. + Each write syscall must fully contain the sysctl value to be + written, and multiple writes on the same sysctl file descriptor + will rewrite the sysctl value, regardless of file position. + 0 - (default) Same behavior as above, but warn about processes that + perform writes to a sysctl file descriptor when the file position + is not 0. + 1 - Respect file position when writing sysctl strings. Multiple writes + will append to the sysctl value buffer. Anything past the max length + of the sysctl value buffer will be ignored. Writes to numeric sysctl + entries must always be at file position 0 and the value must be + fully contained in the buffer sent in the write syscall. + +============================================================== + +softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace: + +This value controls the soft lockup detector thread's behavior +when a soft lockup condition is detected as to whether or not +to gather further debug information. If enabled, each cpu will +be issued an NMI and instructed to capture stack trace. + +This feature is only applicable for architectures which support +NMI. + +0: do nothing. This is the default behavior. + +1: on detection capture more debug information. + +============================================================== + tainted: Non-zero if the kernel has been tainted. Numeric values, which @@ -792,6 +824,8 @@ can be ORed together: 1024 - A module from drivers/staging was loaded. 2048 - The system is working around a severe firmware bug. 4096 - An out-of-tree module has been loaded. +8192 - An unsigned module has been loaded in a kernel supporting module + signature. ============================================================== diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt index d614a9b6a28..4415aa91568 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt @@ -175,18 +175,39 @@ Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether. drop_caches -Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and -inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free. +Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, as well as +reclaimable slab objects like dentries and inodes. Once dropped, their +memory becomes free. To free pagecache: echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches -To free dentries and inodes: +To free reclaimable slab objects (includes dentries and inodes): echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches -To free pagecache, dentries and inodes: +To free slab objects and pagecache: echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches -As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the -user should run `sync' first. +This is a non-destructive operation and will not free any dirty objects. +To increase the number of objects freed by this operation, the user may run +`sync' prior to writing to /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches. This will minimize the +number of dirty objects on the system and create more candidates to be +dropped. + +This file is not a means to control the growth of the various kernel caches +(inodes, dentries, pagecache, etc...) These objects are automatically +reclaimed by the kernel when memory is needed elsewhere on the system. + +Use of this file can cause performance problems. Since it discards cached +objects, it may cost a significant amount of I/O and CPU to recreate the +dropped objects, especially if they were under heavy use. Because of this, +use outside of a testing or debugging environment is not recommended. + +You may see informational messages in your kernel log when this file is +used: + + cat (1234): drop_caches: 3 + +These are informational only. They do not mean that anything is wrong +with your system. To disable them, echo 4 (bit 3) into drop_caches. ============================================================== @@ -681,7 +702,8 @@ The batch value of each per cpu pagelist is also updated as a result. It is set to pcp->high/4. The upper limit of batch is (PAGE_SHIFT * 8) The initial value is zero. Kernel does not use this value at boot time to set -the high water marks for each per cpu page list. +the high water marks for each per cpu page list. If the user writes '0' to this +sysctl, it will revert to this default behavior. ============================================================== @@ -725,8 +747,8 @@ Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory. vfs_cache_pressure ------------------ -Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for -caching of directory and inode objects. +This percentage value controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim +the memory which is used for caching of directory and inode objects. At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and @@ -736,6 +758,11 @@ never reclaim dentries and inodes due to memory pressure and this can easily lead to out-of-memory conditions. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100 causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes. +Increasing vfs_cache_pressure significantly beyond 100 may have negative +performance impact. Reclaim code needs to take various locks to find freeable +directory and inode objects. With vfs_cache_pressure=1000, it will look for +ten times more freeable objects than there are. + ============================================================== zone_reclaim_mode: @@ -751,16 +778,17 @@ This is value ORed together of 2 = Zone reclaim writes dirty pages out 4 = Zone reclaim swaps pages -zone_reclaim_mode is set during bootup to 1 if it is determined that pages -from remote zones will cause a measurable performance reduction. The -page allocator will then reclaim easily reusable pages (those page -cache pages that are currently not used) before allocating off node pages. - -It may be beneficial to switch off zone reclaim if the system is -used for a file server and all of memory should be used for caching files -from disk. In that case the caching effect is more important than +zone_reclaim_mode is disabled by default. For file servers or workloads +that benefit from having their data cached, zone_reclaim_mode should be +left disabled as the caching effect is likely to be more important than data locality. +zone_reclaim may be enabled if it's known that the workload is partitioned +such that each partition fits within a NUMA node and that accessing remote +memory would cause a measurable performance reduction. The page allocator +will then reclaim easily reusable pages (those page cache pages that are +currently not used) before allocating off node pages. + Allowing zone reclaim to write out pages stops processes that are writing large amounts of data from dirtying pages on other nodes. Zone reclaim will write out dirty pages if a zone fills up and so effectively |