[PATCH] do not disturb page referenced state when unmapping memory range

When kernel unmaps an address range, it needs to transfer PTE state into
page struct.  Currently, kernel transfer access bit via
mark_page_accessed().  The call to mark_page_accessed in the unmap path
doesn't look logically correct.

At unmap time, calling mark_page_accessed will causes page LRU state to be
bumped up one step closer to more recently used state.  It is causing quite
a bit headache in a scenario when a process creates a shmem segment, touch
a whole bunch of pages, then unmaps it.  The unmapping takes a long time
because mark_page_accessed() will start moving pages from inactive to
active list.

I'm not too much concerned with moving the page from one list to another in
LRU.  Sooner or later it might be moved because of multiple mappings from
various processes.  But it just doesn't look logical that when user asks a
range to be unmapped, it's his intention that the process is no longer
interested in these pages.  Moving those pages to active list (or bumping
up a state towards more active) seems to be an over reaction.  It also
prolongs unmapping latency which is the core issue I'm trying to solve.

As suggested by Peter, we should still preserve the info on pte young
pages, but not more.

Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Acked-by: Ken Chen <kenchen@google.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
index 0047d3a4e364809389b5fc7a405f1f8f21b2272d..0e6a402d86bee7edf968b1ef97f8b46a42f37a52 100644 (file)
--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -678,7 +678,7 @@ static unsigned long zap_pte_range(struct mmu_gather *tlb,
                                if (pte_dirty(ptent))
                                        set_page_dirty(page);
                                if (pte_young(ptent))
-                                       mark_page_accessed(page);
+                                       SetPageReferenced(page);
                                file_rss--;
                        }
                        page_remove_rmap(page, vma);