1.. _unevictable_lru: 2 3============================== 4Unevictable LRU Infrastructure 5============================== 6 7.. contents:: :local: 8 9 10Introduction 11============ 12 13This document describes the Linux memory manager's "Unevictable LRU" 14infrastructure and the use of this to manage several types of "unevictable" 15pages. 16 17The document attempts to provide the overall rationale behind this mechanism 18and the rationale for some of the design decisions that drove the 19implementation. The latter design rationale is discussed in the context of an 20implementation description. Admittedly, one can obtain the implementation 21details - the "what does it do?" - by reading the code. One hopes that the 22descriptions below add value by provide the answer to "why does it do that?". 23 24 25 26The Unevictable LRU 27=================== 28 29The Unevictable LRU facility adds an additional LRU list to track unevictable 30pages and to hide these pages from vmscan. This mechanism is based on a patch 31by Larry Woodman of Red Hat to address several scalability problems with page 32reclaim in Linux. The problems have been observed at customer sites on large 33memory x86_64 systems. 34 35To illustrate this with an example, a non-NUMA x86_64 platform with 128GB of 36main memory will have over 32 million 4k pages in a single zone. When a large 37fraction of these pages are not evictable for any reason [see below], vmscan 38will spend a lot of time scanning the LRU lists looking for the small fraction 39of pages that are evictable. This can result in a situation where all CPUs are 40spending 100% of their time in vmscan for hours or days on end, with the system 41completely unresponsive. 42 43The unevictable list addresses the following classes of unevictable pages: 44 45 * Those owned by ramfs. 46 47 * Those mapped into SHM_LOCK'd shared memory regions. 48 49 * Those mapped into VM_LOCKED [mlock()ed] VMAs. 50 51The infrastructure may also be able to handle other conditions that make pages 52unevictable, either by definition or by circumstance, in the future. 53 54 55The Unevictable Page List 56------------------------- 57 58The Unevictable LRU infrastructure consists of an additional, per-zone, LRU list 59called the "unevictable" list and an associated page flag, PG_unevictable, to 60indicate that the page is being managed on the unevictable list. 61 62The PG_unevictable flag is analogous to, and mutually exclusive with, the 63PG_active flag in that it indicates on which LRU list a page resides when 64PG_lru is set. 65 66The Unevictable LRU infrastructure maintains unevictable pages on an additional 67LRU list for a few reasons: 68 69 (1) We get to "treat unevictable pages just like we treat other pages in the 70 system - which means we get to use the same code to manipulate them, the 71 same code to isolate them (for migrate, etc.), the same code to keep track 72 of the statistics, etc..." [Rik van Riel] 73 74 (2) We want to be able to migrate unevictable pages between nodes for memory 75 defragmentation, workload management and memory hotplug. The linux kernel 76 can only migrate pages that it can successfully isolate from the LRU 77 lists. If we were to maintain pages elsewhere than on an LRU-like list, 78 where they can be found by isolate_lru_page(), we would prevent their 79 migration, unless we reworked migration code to find the unevictable pages 80 itself. 81 82 83The unevictable list does not differentiate between file-backed and anonymous, 84swap-backed pages. This differentiation is only important while the pages are, 85in fact, evictable. 86 87The unevictable list benefits from the "arrayification" of the per-zone LRU 88lists and statistics originally proposed and posted by Christoph Lameter. 89 90The unevictable list does not use the LRU pagevec mechanism. Rather, 91unevictable pages are placed directly on the page's zone's unevictable list 92under the zone lru_lock. This allows us to prevent the stranding of pages on 93the unevictable list when one task has the page isolated from the LRU and other 94tasks are changing the "evictability" state of the page. 95 96 97Memory Control Group Interaction 98-------------------------------- 99 100The unevictable LRU facility interacts with the memory control group [aka 101memory controller; see Documentation/cgroup-v1/memory.txt] by extending the 102lru_list enum. 103 104The memory controller data structure automatically gets a per-zone unevictable 105list as a result of the "arrayification" of the per-zone LRU lists (one per 106lru_list enum element). The memory controller tracks the movement of pages to 107and from the unevictable list. 108 109When a memory control group comes under memory pressure, the controller will 110not attempt to reclaim pages on the unevictable list. This has a couple of 111effects: 112 113 (1) Because the pages are "hidden" from reclaim on the unevictable list, the 114 reclaim process can be more efficient, dealing only with pages that have a 115 chance of being reclaimed. 116 117 (2) On the other hand, if too many of the pages charged to the control group 118 are unevictable, the evictable portion of the working set of the tasks in 119 the control group may not fit into the available memory. This can cause 120 the control group to thrash or to OOM-kill tasks. 121 122 123.. _mark_addr_space_unevict: 124 125Marking Address Spaces Unevictable 126---------------------------------- 127 128For facilities such as ramfs none of the pages attached to the address space 129may be evicted. To prevent eviction of any such pages, the AS_UNEVICTABLE 130address space flag is provided, and this can be manipulated by a filesystem 131using a number of wrapper functions: 132 133 * ``void mapping_set_unevictable(struct address_space *mapping);`` 134 135 Mark the address space as being completely unevictable. 136 137 * ``void mapping_clear_unevictable(struct address_space *mapping);`` 138 139 Mark the address space as being evictable. 140 141 * ``int mapping_unevictable(struct address_space *mapping);`` 142 143 Query the address space, and return true if it is completely 144 unevictable. 145 146These are currently used in two places in the kernel: 147 148 (1) By ramfs to mark the address spaces of its inodes when they are created, 149 and this mark remains for the life of the inode. 150 151 (2) By SYSV SHM to mark SHM_LOCK'd address spaces until SHM_UNLOCK is called. 152 153 Note that SHM_LOCK is not required to page in the locked pages if they're 154 swapped out; the application must touch the pages manually if it wants to 155 ensure they're in memory. 156 157 158Detecting Unevictable Pages 159--------------------------- 160 161The function page_evictable() in vmscan.c determines whether a page is 162evictable or not using the query function outlined above [see section 163:ref:`Marking address spaces unevictable <mark_addr_space_unevict>`] 164to check the AS_UNEVICTABLE flag. 165 166For address spaces that are so marked after being populated (as SHM regions 167might be), the lock action (eg: SHM_LOCK) can be lazy, and need not populate 168the page tables for the region as does, for example, mlock(), nor need it make 169any special effort to push any pages in the SHM_LOCK'd area to the unevictable 170list. Instead, vmscan will do this if and when it encounters the pages during 171a reclamation scan. 172 173On an unlock action (such as SHM_UNLOCK), the unlocker (eg: shmctl()) must scan 174the pages in the region and "rescue" them from the unevictable list if no other 175condition is keeping them unevictable. If an unevictable region is destroyed, 176the pages are also "rescued" from the unevictable list in the process of 177freeing them. 178 179page_evictable() also checks for mlocked pages by testing an additional page 180flag, PG_mlocked (as wrapped by PageMlocked()), which is set when a page is 181faulted into a VM_LOCKED vma, or found in a vma being VM_LOCKED. 182 183 184Vmscan's Handling of Unevictable Pages 185-------------------------------------- 186 187If unevictable pages are culled in the fault path, or moved to the unevictable 188list at mlock() or mmap() time, vmscan will not encounter the pages until they 189have become evictable again (via munlock() for example) and have been "rescued" 190from the unevictable list. However, there may be situations where we decide, 191for the sake of expediency, to leave a unevictable page on one of the regular 192active/inactive LRU lists for vmscan to deal with. vmscan checks for such 193pages in all of the shrink_{active|inactive|page}_list() functions and will 194"cull" such pages that it encounters: that is, it diverts those pages to the 195unevictable list for the zone being scanned. 196 197There may be situations where a page is mapped into a VM_LOCKED VMA, but the 198page is not marked as PG_mlocked. Such pages will make it all the way to 199shrink_page_list() where they will be detected when vmscan walks the reverse 200map in try_to_unmap(). If try_to_unmap() returns SWAP_MLOCK, 201shrink_page_list() will cull the page at that point. 202 203To "cull" an unevictable page, vmscan simply puts the page back on the LRU list 204using putback_lru_page() - the inverse operation to isolate_lru_page() - after 205dropping the page lock. Because the condition which makes the page unevictable 206may change once the page is unlocked, putback_lru_page() will recheck the 207unevictable state of a page that it places on the unevictable list. If the 208page has become unevictable, putback_lru_page() removes it from the list and 209retries, including the page_unevictable() test. Because such a race is a rare 210event and movement of pages onto the unevictable list should be rare, these 211extra evictabilty checks should not occur in the majority of calls to 212putback_lru_page(). 213 214 215MLOCKED Pages 216============= 217 218The unevictable page list is also useful for mlock(), in addition to ramfs and 219SYSV SHM. Note that mlock() is only available in CONFIG_MMU=y situations; in 220NOMMU situations, all mappings are effectively mlocked. 221 222 223History 224------- 225 226The "Unevictable mlocked Pages" infrastructure is based on work originally 227posted by Nick Piggin in an RFC patch entitled "mm: mlocked pages off LRU". 228Nick posted his patch as an alternative to a patch posted by Christoph Lameter 229to achieve the same objective: hiding mlocked pages from vmscan. 230 231In Nick's patch, he used one of the struct page LRU list link fields as a count 232of VM_LOCKED VMAs that map the page. This use of the link field for a count 233prevented the management of the pages on an LRU list, and thus mlocked pages 234were not migratable as isolate_lru_page() could not find them, and the LRU list 235link field was not available to the migration subsystem. 236 237Nick resolved this by putting mlocked pages back on the lru list before 238attempting to isolate them, thus abandoning the count of VM_LOCKED VMAs. When 239Nick's patch was integrated with the Unevictable LRU work, the count was 240replaced by walking the reverse map to determine whether any VM_LOCKED VMAs 241mapped the page. More on this below. 242 243 244Basic Management 245---------------- 246 247mlocked pages - pages mapped into a VM_LOCKED VMA - are a class of unevictable 248pages. When such a page has been "noticed" by the memory management subsystem, 249the page is marked with the PG_mlocked flag. This can be manipulated using the 250PageMlocked() functions. 251 252A PG_mlocked page will be placed on the unevictable list when it is added to 253the LRU. Such pages can be "noticed" by memory management in several places: 254 255 (1) in the mlock()/mlockall() system call handlers; 256 257 (2) in the mmap() system call handler when mmapping a region with the 258 MAP_LOCKED flag; 259 260 (3) mmapping a region in a task that has called mlockall() with the MCL_FUTURE 261 flag 262 263 (4) in the fault path, if mlocked pages are "culled" in the fault path, 264 and when a VM_LOCKED stack segment is expanded; or 265 266 (5) as mentioned above, in vmscan:shrink_page_list() when attempting to 267 reclaim a page in a VM_LOCKED VMA via try_to_unmap() 268 269all of which result in the VM_LOCKED flag being set for the VMA if it doesn't 270already have it set. 271 272mlocked pages become unlocked and rescued from the unevictable list when: 273 274 (1) mapped in a range unlocked via the munlock()/munlockall() system calls; 275 276 (2) munmap()'d out of the last VM_LOCKED VMA that maps the page, including 277 unmapping at task exit; 278 279 (3) when the page is truncated from the last VM_LOCKED VMA of an mmapped file; 280 or 281 282 (4) before a page is COW'd in a VM_LOCKED VMA. 283 284 285mlock()/mlockall() System Call Handling 286--------------------------------------- 287 288Both [do\_]mlock() and [do\_]mlockall() system call handlers call mlock_fixup() 289for each VMA in the range specified by the call. In the case of mlockall(), 290this is the entire active address space of the task. Note that mlock_fixup() 291is used for both mlocking and munlocking a range of memory. A call to mlock() 292an already VM_LOCKED VMA, or to munlock() a VMA that is not VM_LOCKED is 293treated as a no-op, and mlock_fixup() simply returns. 294 295If the VMA passes some filtering as described in "Filtering Special Vmas" 296below, mlock_fixup() will attempt to merge the VMA with its neighbors or split 297off a subset of the VMA if the range does not cover the entire VMA. Once the 298VMA has been merged or split or neither, mlock_fixup() will call 299populate_vma_page_range() to fault in the pages via get_user_pages() and to 300mark the pages as mlocked via mlock_vma_page(). 301 302Note that the VMA being mlocked might be mapped with PROT_NONE. In this case, 303get_user_pages() will be unable to fault in the pages. That's okay. If pages 304do end up getting faulted into this VM_LOCKED VMA, we'll handle them in the 305fault path or in vmscan. 306 307Also note that a page returned by get_user_pages() could be truncated or 308migrated out from under us, while we're trying to mlock it. To detect this, 309populate_vma_page_range() checks page_mapping() after acquiring the page lock. 310If the page is still associated with its mapping, we'll go ahead and call 311mlock_vma_page(). If the mapping is gone, we just unlock the page and move on. 312In the worst case, this will result in a page mapped in a VM_LOCKED VMA 313remaining on a normal LRU list without being PageMlocked(). Again, vmscan will 314detect and cull such pages. 315 316mlock_vma_page() will call TestSetPageMlocked() for each page returned by 317get_user_pages(). We use TestSetPageMlocked() because the page might already 318be mlocked by another task/VMA and we don't want to do extra work. We 319especially do not want to count an mlocked page more than once in the 320statistics. If the page was already mlocked, mlock_vma_page() need do nothing 321more. 322 323If the page was NOT already mlocked, mlock_vma_page() attempts to isolate the 324page from the LRU, as it is likely on the appropriate active or inactive list 325at that time. If the isolate_lru_page() succeeds, mlock_vma_page() will put 326back the page - by calling putback_lru_page() - which will notice that the page 327is now mlocked and divert the page to the zone's unevictable list. If 328mlock_vma_page() is unable to isolate the page from the LRU, vmscan will handle 329it later if and when it attempts to reclaim the page. 330 331 332Filtering Special VMAs 333---------------------- 334 335mlock_fixup() filters several classes of "special" VMAs: 336 3371) VMAs with VM_IO or VM_PFNMAP set are skipped entirely. The pages behind 338 these mappings are inherently pinned, so we don't need to mark them as 339 mlocked. In any case, most of the pages have no struct page in which to so 340 mark the page. Because of this, get_user_pages() will fail for these VMAs, 341 so there is no sense in attempting to visit them. 342 3432) VMAs mapping hugetlbfs page are already effectively pinned into memory. We 344 neither need nor want to mlock() these pages. However, to preserve the 345 prior behavior of mlock() - before the unevictable/mlock changes - 346 mlock_fixup() will call make_pages_present() in the hugetlbfs VMA range to 347 allocate the huge pages and populate the ptes. 348 3493) VMAs with VM_DONTEXPAND are generally userspace mappings of kernel pages, 350 such as the VDSO page, relay channel pages, etc. These pages 351 are inherently unevictable and are not managed on the LRU lists. 352 mlock_fixup() treats these VMAs the same as hugetlbfs VMAs. It calls 353 make_pages_present() to populate the ptes. 354 355Note that for all of these special VMAs, mlock_fixup() does not set the 356VM_LOCKED flag. Therefore, we won't have to deal with them later during 357munlock(), munmap() or task exit. Neither does mlock_fixup() account these 358VMAs against the task's "locked_vm". 359 360.. _munlock_munlockall_handling: 361 362munlock()/munlockall() System Call Handling 363------------------------------------------- 364 365The munlock() and munlockall() system calls are handled by the same functions - 366do_mlock[all]() - as the mlock() and mlockall() system calls with the unlock vs 367lock operation indicated by an argument. So, these system calls are also 368handled by mlock_fixup(). Again, if called for an already munlocked VMA, 369mlock_fixup() simply returns. Because of the VMA filtering discussed above, 370VM_LOCKED will not be set in any "special" VMAs. So, these VMAs will be 371ignored for munlock. 372 373If the VMA is VM_LOCKED, mlock_fixup() again attempts to merge or split off the 374specified range. The range is then munlocked via the function 375populate_vma_page_range() - the same function used to mlock a VMA range - 376passing a flag to indicate that munlock() is being performed. 377 378Because the VMA access protections could have been changed to PROT_NONE after 379faulting in and mlocking pages, get_user_pages() was unreliable for visiting 380these pages for munlocking. Because we don't want to leave pages mlocked, 381get_user_pages() was enhanced to accept a flag to ignore the permissions when 382fetching the pages - all of which should be resident as a result of previous 383mlocking. 384 385For munlock(), populate_vma_page_range() unlocks individual pages by calling 386munlock_vma_page(). munlock_vma_page() unconditionally clears the PG_mlocked 387flag using TestClearPageMlocked(). As with mlock_vma_page(), 388munlock_vma_page() use the Test*PageMlocked() function to handle the case where 389the page might have already been unlocked by another task. If the page was 390mlocked, munlock_vma_page() updates that zone statistics for the number of 391mlocked pages. Note, however, that at this point we haven't checked whether 392the page is mapped by other VM_LOCKED VMAs. 393 394We can't call try_to_munlock(), the function that walks the reverse map to 395check for other VM_LOCKED VMAs, without first isolating the page from the LRU. 396try_to_munlock() is a variant of try_to_unmap() and thus requires that the page 397not be on an LRU list [more on these below]. However, the call to 398isolate_lru_page() could fail, in which case we couldn't try_to_munlock(). So, 399we go ahead and clear PG_mlocked up front, as this might be the only chance we 400have. If we can successfully isolate the page, we go ahead and 401try_to_munlock(), which will restore the PG_mlocked flag and update the zone 402page statistics if it finds another VMA holding the page mlocked. If we fail 403to isolate the page, we'll have left a potentially mlocked page on the LRU. 404This is fine, because we'll catch it later if and if vmscan tries to reclaim 405the page. This should be relatively rare. 406 407 408Migrating MLOCKED Pages 409----------------------- 410 411A page that is being migrated has been isolated from the LRU lists and is held 412locked across unmapping of the page, updating the page's address space entry 413and copying the contents and state, until the page table entry has been 414replaced with an entry that refers to the new page. Linux supports migration 415of mlocked pages and other unevictable pages. This involves simply moving the 416PG_mlocked and PG_unevictable states from the old page to the new page. 417 418Note that page migration can race with mlocking or munlocking of the same page. 419This has been discussed from the mlock/munlock perspective in the respective 420sections above. Both processes (migration and m[un]locking) hold the page 421locked. This provides the first level of synchronization. Page migration 422zeros out the page_mapping of the old page before unlocking it, so m[un]lock 423can skip these pages by testing the page mapping under page lock. 424 425To complete page migration, we place the new and old pages back onto the LRU 426after dropping the page lock. The "unneeded" page - old page on success, new 427page on failure - will be freed when the reference count held by the migration 428process is released. To ensure that we don't strand pages on the unevictable 429list because of a race between munlock and migration, page migration uses the 430putback_lru_page() function to add migrated pages back to the LRU. 431 432 433Compacting MLOCKED Pages 434------------------------ 435 436The unevictable LRU can be scanned for compactable regions and the default 437behavior is to do so. /proc/sys/vm/compact_unevictable_allowed controls 438this behavior (see Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt). Once scanning of the 439unevictable LRU is enabled, the work of compaction is mostly handled by 440the page migration code and the same work flow as described in MIGRATING 441MLOCKED PAGES will apply. 442 443MLOCKING Transparent Huge Pages 444------------------------------- 445 446A transparent huge page is represented by a single entry on an LRU list. 447Therefore, we can only make unevictable an entire compound page, not 448individual subpages. 449 450If a user tries to mlock() part of a huge page, we want the rest of the 451page to be reclaimable. 452 453We cannot just split the page on partial mlock() as split_huge_page() can 454fail and new intermittent failure mode for the syscall is undesirable. 455 456We handle this by keeping PTE-mapped huge pages on normal LRU lists: the 457PMD on border of VM_LOCKED VMA will be split into PTE table. 458 459This way the huge page is accessible for vmscan. Under memory pressure the 460page will be split, subpages which belong to VM_LOCKED VMAs will be moved 461to unevictable LRU and the rest can be reclaimed. 462 463See also comment in follow_trans_huge_pmd(). 464 465mmap(MAP_LOCKED) System Call Handling 466------------------------------------- 467 468In addition the mlock()/mlockall() system calls, an application can request 469that a region of memory be mlocked supplying the MAP_LOCKED flag to the mmap() 470call. There is one important and subtle difference here, though. mmap() + mlock() 471will fail if the range cannot be faulted in (e.g. because mm_populate fails) 472and returns with ENOMEM while mmap(MAP_LOCKED) will not fail. The mmaped 473area will still have properties of the locked area - aka. pages will not get 474swapped out - but major page faults to fault memory in might still happen. 475 476Furthermore, any mmap() call or brk() call that expands the heap by a 477task that has previously called mlockall() with the MCL_FUTURE flag will result 478in the newly mapped memory being mlocked. Before the unevictable/mlock 479changes, the kernel simply called make_pages_present() to allocate pages and 480populate the page table. 481 482To mlock a range of memory under the unevictable/mlock infrastructure, the 483mmap() handler and task address space expansion functions call 484populate_vma_page_range() specifying the vma and the address range to mlock. 485 486The callers of populate_vma_page_range() will have already added the memory range 487to be mlocked to the task's "locked_vm". To account for filtered VMAs, 488populate_vma_page_range() returns the number of pages NOT mlocked. All of the 489callers then subtract a non-negative return value from the task's locked_vm. A 490negative return value represent an error - for example, from get_user_pages() 491attempting to fault in a VMA with PROT_NONE access. In this case, we leave the 492memory range accounted as locked_vm, as the protections could be changed later 493and pages allocated into that region. 494 495 496munmap()/exit()/exec() System Call Handling 497------------------------------------------- 498 499When unmapping an mlocked region of memory, whether by an explicit call to 500munmap() or via an internal unmap from exit() or exec() processing, we must 501munlock the pages if we're removing the last VM_LOCKED VMA that maps the pages. 502Before the unevictable/mlock changes, mlocking did not mark the pages in any 503way, so unmapping them required no processing. 504 505To munlock a range of memory under the unevictable/mlock infrastructure, the 506munmap() handler and task address space call tear down function 507munlock_vma_pages_all(). The name reflects the observation that one always 508specifies the entire VMA range when munlock()ing during unmap of a region. 509Because of the VMA filtering when mlocking() regions, only "normal" VMAs that 510actually contain mlocked pages will be passed to munlock_vma_pages_all(). 511 512munlock_vma_pages_all() clears the VM_LOCKED VMA flag and, like mlock_fixup() 513for the munlock case, calls __munlock_vma_pages_range() to walk the page table 514for the VMA's memory range and munlock_vma_page() each resident page mapped by 515the VMA. This effectively munlocks the page, only if this is the last 516VM_LOCKED VMA that maps the page. 517 518 519try_to_unmap() 520-------------- 521 522Pages can, of course, be mapped into multiple VMAs. Some of these VMAs may 523have VM_LOCKED flag set. It is possible for a page mapped into one or more 524VM_LOCKED VMAs not to have the PG_mlocked flag set and therefore reside on one 525of the active or inactive LRU lists. This could happen if, for example, a task 526in the process of munlocking the page could not isolate the page from the LRU. 527As a result, vmscan/shrink_page_list() might encounter such a page as described 528in section "vmscan's handling of unevictable pages". To handle this situation, 529try_to_unmap() checks for VM_LOCKED VMAs while it is walking a page's reverse 530map. 531 532try_to_unmap() is always called, by either vmscan for reclaim or for page 533migration, with the argument page locked and isolated from the LRU. Separate 534functions handle anonymous and mapped file and KSM pages, as these types of 535pages have different reverse map lookup mechanisms, with different locking. 536In each case, whether rmap_walk_anon() or rmap_walk_file() or rmap_walk_ksm(), 537it will call try_to_unmap_one() for every VMA which might contain the page. 538 539When trying to reclaim, if try_to_unmap_one() finds the page in a VM_LOCKED 540VMA, it will then mlock the page via mlock_vma_page() instead of unmapping it, 541and return SWAP_MLOCK to indicate that the page is unevictable: and the scan 542stops there. 543 544mlock_vma_page() is called while holding the page table's lock (in addition 545to the page lock, and the rmap lock): to serialize against concurrent mlock or 546munlock or munmap system calls, mm teardown (munlock_vma_pages_all), reclaim, 547holepunching, and truncation of file pages and their anonymous COWed pages. 548 549 550try_to_munlock() Reverse Map Scan 551--------------------------------- 552 553.. warning:: 554 [!] TODO/FIXME: a better name might be page_mlocked() - analogous to the 555 page_referenced() reverse map walker. 556 557When munlock_vma_page() [see section :ref:`munlock()/munlockall() System Call 558Handling <munlock_munlockall_handling>` above] tries to munlock a 559page, it needs to determine whether or not the page is mapped by any 560VM_LOCKED VMA without actually attempting to unmap all PTEs from the 561page. For this purpose, the unevictable/mlock infrastructure 562introduced a variant of try_to_unmap() called try_to_munlock(). 563 564try_to_munlock() calls the same functions as try_to_unmap() for anonymous and 565mapped file and KSM pages with a flag argument specifying unlock versus unmap 566processing. Again, these functions walk the respective reverse maps looking 567for VM_LOCKED VMAs. When such a VMA is found, as in the try_to_unmap() case, 568the functions mlock the page via mlock_vma_page() and return SWAP_MLOCK. This 569undoes the pre-clearing of the page's PG_mlocked done by munlock_vma_page. 570 571Note that try_to_munlock()'s reverse map walk must visit every VMA in a page's 572reverse map to determine that a page is NOT mapped into any VM_LOCKED VMA. 573However, the scan can terminate when it encounters a VM_LOCKED VMA. 574Although try_to_munlock() might be called a great many times when munlocking a 575large region or tearing down a large address space that has been mlocked via 576mlockall(), overall this is a fairly rare event. 577 578 579Page Reclaim in shrink_*_list() 580------------------------------- 581 582shrink_active_list() culls any obviously unevictable pages - i.e. 583!page_evictable(page) - diverting these to the unevictable list. 584However, shrink_active_list() only sees unevictable pages that made it onto the 585active/inactive lru lists. Note that these pages do not have PageUnevictable 586set - otherwise they would be on the unevictable list and shrink_active_list 587would never see them. 588 589Some examples of these unevictable pages on the LRU lists are: 590 591 (1) ramfs pages that have been placed on the LRU lists when first allocated. 592 593 (2) SHM_LOCK'd shared memory pages. shmctl(SHM_LOCK) does not attempt to 594 allocate or fault in the pages in the shared memory region. This happens 595 when an application accesses the page the first time after SHM_LOCK'ing 596 the segment. 597 598 (3) mlocked pages that could not be isolated from the LRU and moved to the 599 unevictable list in mlock_vma_page(). 600 601shrink_inactive_list() also diverts any unevictable pages that it finds on the 602inactive lists to the appropriate zone's unevictable list. 603 604shrink_inactive_list() should only see SHM_LOCK'd pages that became SHM_LOCK'd 605after shrink_active_list() had moved them to the inactive list, or pages mapped 606into VM_LOCKED VMAs that munlock_vma_page() couldn't isolate from the LRU to 607recheck via try_to_munlock(). shrink_inactive_list() won't notice the latter, 608but will pass on to shrink_page_list(). 609 610shrink_page_list() again culls obviously unevictable pages that it could 611encounter for similar reason to shrink_inactive_list(). Pages mapped into 612VM_LOCKED VMAs but without PG_mlocked set will make it all the way to 613try_to_unmap(). shrink_page_list() will divert them to the unevictable list 614when try_to_unmap() returns SWAP_MLOCK, as discussed above. 615