From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
To: Ivan Teterevkov <ivan.teterevkov@nutanix.com>
Cc: "corbet@lwn.net" <corbet@lwn.net>,
"akpm@linux-foundation.org" <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
"mchehab+samsung@kernel.org" <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>,
"tglx@linutronix.de" <tglx@linutronix.de>,
"jpoimboe@redhat.com" <jpoimboe@redhat.com>,
"pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com"
<pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>,
"jgross@suse.com" <jgross@suse.com>,
"oneukum@suse.com" <oneukum@suse.com>,
"linux-doc@vger.kernel.org" <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>,
"linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
"linux-mm@kvack.org" <linux-mm@kvack.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/vmscan: add vm_swappiness configuration knobs
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2020 10:25:31 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200312092531.GU23944@dhcp22.suse.cz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <BL0PR02MB560167492CA4094C91589930E9FC0@BL0PR02MB5601.namprd02.prod.outlook.com>
On Wed 11-03-20 17:45:58, Ivan Teterevkov wrote:
> This patch adds a couple of knobs:
>
> - The configuration option (CONFIG_VM_SWAPPINESS).
> - The command line parameter (vm_swappiness).
>
> The default value is preserved, but now defined by CONFIG_VM_SWAPPINESS.
>
> Historically, the default swappiness is set to the well-known value 60,
> and this works well for the majority of cases. The vm_swappiness is also
> exposed as the kernel parameter that can be changed at runtime too, e.g.
> with sysctl.
>
> This approach might not suit well some configurations, e.g. systemd-based
> distros, where systemd is put in charge of the cgroup controllers,
> including the memory one. In such cases, the default swappiness 60
> is copied across the cgroup subtrees early at startup, when systemd
> is arranging the slices for its services, before the sysctl.conf
> or tmpfiles.d/*.conf changes are applied.
>
> One could run a script to traverse the cgroup trees later and set the
> desired memory.swappiness individually in each occurrence when the runtime
> is set up, but this would require some amount of work to implement
> properly. Instead, why not set the default swappiness as early as possible?
I have to say I am not a great fan of more tunning for swappiness as
this is quite a poor tunning for many years already. It essentially does
nothing in many cases because the reclaim process ignores to value in
many cases (have a look a get_scan_count. I have seen quite some
reports that setting a specific value for vmswappiness didn't make any
change. The knob itself has a terrible semantic to begin with because
there is no way to express I really prefer to swap rather than page
cache reclaim.
This all makes me think that swappiness is a historical mistake that we
should rather make obsolete than promote even further.
--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-03-12 9:25 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-03-11 17:45 [PATCH] mm/vmscan: add vm_swappiness configuration knobs Ivan Teterevkov
2020-03-11 19:31 ` David Rientjes
2020-03-12 12:48 ` Ivan Teterevkov
2020-03-12 13:36 ` Matthew Wilcox
2020-03-12 14:03 ` Chris Down
2020-03-13 10:49 ` Ivan Teterevkov
2020-03-13 21:50 ` David Rientjes
2020-03-16 16:03 ` Ivan Teterevkov
2020-03-12 9:25 ` Michal Hocko [this message]
2020-03-12 12:54 ` Ivan Teterevkov
2020-03-12 13:26 ` Michal Hocko
2020-03-16 14:53 ` Vlastimil Babka
2020-03-16 16:14 ` Ivan Teterevkov
2020-03-17 8:29 ` Michal Hocko
2020-03-17 14:51 ` Vlastimil Babka
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