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Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:46:36 +0800
From: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Subject: Re: Isolated(anon) and Isolated(file)
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To: Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>, Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>, Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, "linux-mm@kvack.org" <linux-mm@kvack.org>
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On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:42:38AM +0800, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> Hi KOSAKI-san,
> 
> May I question the addition of Isolated(anon) and Isolated(file)
> lines to /proc/meminfo?  I get irritated by all such "0 kB" lines!
> 
> I see their appropriateness and usefulness in the Alt-Sysrq-M-style
> info which accompanies an OOM; and I see that those statistics help
> you to identify and fix bugs of having too many pages isolated.
> 
> But IMHO they're too transient to be appropriate in /proc/meminfo:
> by the time the "cat /proc/meminfo" is done, the situation is very
> different (or should be once the bugs are fixed).
> 
> Almost all its numbers are transient, of course, but these seem
> so much so that I think /proc/meminfo is better off without them
> (compressing more info into fewer lines).
> 
> Perhaps I'm in the minority: if others care, what do they think?

Hugh, I tend to agree with you.

Typically one will have difficulty running the "cat /proc/meminfo"
command when isolated numbers are large, because that means so many
processes running that 'cat' cannot be scheduled for very long time.

If anywhere, /proc/vmstat (which has more "advanced" numbers) or
/sys/devices/system/node/node0/meminfo (which is less visited by
human?) may be more suitable place for the isolated numbers.

Thanks,
Fengguang

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