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    SubjectSubject: [PATCH V7 4/4] mm: frontswap: config and doc files
    From: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com>
    Subject: [PATCH V7 4/4] mm: frontswap: config and doc files

    This fourth patch of four in the frontswap series adds configuration
    and documentation files.

    [v6: rebase to 3.0-rc1]
    [v5: change config default to n]
    [v4: rebase to 2.6.39]
    Signed-off-by: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com>
    Reviewed-by: Konrad Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
    Acked-by: Jan Beulich <JBeulich@novell.com>
    Acked-by: Seth Jennings <sjenning@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
    Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>
    Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
    Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
    Cc: Nitin Gupta <ngupta@vflare.org>
    Cc: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
    Cc: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
    Cc: Rik Riel <riel@redhat.com>
    Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

    --- linux/mm/Makefile 2011-07-20 14:50:42.365999021 -0600
    +++ frontswap/mm/Makefile 2011-08-23 08:20:09.778810690 -0600
    @@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_HAVE_MEMBLOCK) += memblock.

    obj-$(CONFIG_BOUNCE) += bounce.o
    obj-$(CONFIG_SWAP) += page_io.o swap_state.o swapfile.o thrash.o
    +obj-$(CONFIG_FRONTSWAP) += frontswap.o
    obj-$(CONFIG_HAS_DMA) += dmapool.o
    obj-$(CONFIG_HUGETLBFS) += hugetlb.o
    obj-$(CONFIG_NUMA) += mempolicy.o
    --- linux/mm/Kconfig 2011-08-08 08:19:26.303686905 -0600
    +++ frontswap/mm/Kconfig 2011-08-23 08:20:09.775828134 -0600
    @@ -370,3 +370,20 @@ config CLEANCACHE
    in a negligible performance hit.

    If unsure, say Y to enable cleancache
    +
    +config FRONTSWAP
    + bool "Enable frontswap to cache swap pages if tmem is present"
    + depends on SWAP
    + default n
    + help
    + Frontswap is so named because it can be thought of as the opposite
    + of a "backing" store for a swap device. The data is stored into
    + "transcendent memory", memory that is not directly accessible or
    + addressable by the kernel and is of unknown and possibly
    + time-varying size. When space in transcendent memory is available,
    + a significant swap I/O reduction may be achieved. When none is
    + available, all frontswap calls are reduced to a single pointer-
    + compare-against-NULL resulting in a negligible performance hit
    + and swap data is stored as normal on the matching swap device.
    +
    + If unsure, say Y to enable frontswap.
    --- linux/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-mm-frontswap 1969-12-31 17:00:00.000000000 -0700
    +++ frontswap/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-mm-frontswap 2011-08-23 08:20:09.753931186 -0600
    @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
    +What: /sys/kernel/mm/frontswap/
    +Date: August 2011
    +Contact: Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com>
    +Description:
    + /sys/kernel/mm/frontswap/ contains a number of files which
    + record a count of various frontswap operations (sum across
    + all swap devices):
    + succ_puts
    + failed_puts
    + gets
    + flushes
    + In addition, reading the curr_pages file shows how many
    + pages are currently contained in frontswap and writing this
    + file with an integer performs a "partial swapoff", reducing
    + the number of frontswap pages to that integer if memory
    + constraints permit.
    --- linux/Documentation/vm/frontswap.txt 1969-12-31 17:00:00.000000000 -0700
    +++ frontswap/Documentation/vm/frontswap.txt 2011-08-23 08:20:09.755814076 -0600
    @@ -0,0 +1,215 @@
    +Frontswap provides a "transcendent memory" interface for swap pages.
    +In some environments, dramatic performance savings may be obtained because
    +swapped pages are saved in RAM (or a RAM-like device) instead of a swap disk.
    +
    +Frontswap is so named because it can be thought of as the opposite of
    +a "backing" store for a swap device. The storage is assumed to be
    +a synchronous concurrency-safe page-oriented "pseudo-RAM device" conforming
    +to the requirements of transcendent memory (such as Xen's "tmem", or
    +in-kernel compressed memory, aka "zcache", or future RAM-like devices);
    +this pseudo-RAM device is not directly accessible or addressable by the
    +kernel and is of unknown and possibly time-varying size. The driver
    +links itself to frontswap by calling frontswap_register_ops to set the
    +frontswap_ops funcs appropriately and the functions it provides must
    +conform to certain policies as follows:
    +
    +An "init" prepares the device to receive frontswap pages associated
    +with the specified swap device number (aka "type"). A "put_page" will
    +copy the page to transcendent memory and associate it with the type and
    +offset associated with the page. A "get_page" will copy the page, if found,
    +from transcendent memory into kernel memory, but will NOT remove the page
    +from from transcendent memory. A "flush_page" will remove the page from
    +transcendent memory and a "flush_area" will remove ALL pages associated
    +with the swap type (e.g., like swapoff) and notify the "device" to refuse
    +further puts with that swap type.
    +
    +Once a page is successfully put, a matching get on the page will normally
    +succeed. So when the kernel finds itself in a situation where it needs
    +to swap out a page, it first attempts to use frontswap. If the put returns
    +success, the data has been successfully saved to transcendent memory and
    +a disk write and, if the data is later read back, a disk read are avoided.
    +If a put returns failure, transcendent memory has rejected the data, and the
    +page can be written to swap as usual.
    +
    +Note that if a page is put and the page already exists in transcendent memory
    +(a "duplicate" put), either the put succeeds and the data is overwritten,
    +or the put fails AND the page is flushed. This ensures stale data may
    +never be obtained from frontswap.
    +
    +Monitoring and control of frontswap is done by sysfs files in the
    +/sys/kernel/mm/frontswap directory. The effectiveness of frontswap can
    +be measured (across all swap devices) with:
    +
    +curr_pages - number of pages currently contained in frontswap
    +failed_puts - how many put attempts have failed
    +gets - how many gets were attempted (all should succeed)
    +succ_puts - how many put attempts have succeeded
    +flushes - how many flushes were attempted
    +
    +The number of pages currently contained in frontswap can be reduced by root by
    +writing an integer target to curr_pages, which results in a "partial swapoff",
    +thus reducing the number of frontswap pages to that target if memory
    +constraints permit.
    +
    +FAQ
    +
    +1) Where's the value?
    +
    +When a workload starts swapping, performance falls through the floor.
    +Frontswap significantly increases performance in many such workloads by
    +providing a clean, dynamic interface to read and write swap pages to
    +"transcendent memory" that is otherwise not directly addressable to the kernel.
    +This interface is ideal when data is transformed to a different form
    +and size (such as with compression) or secretly moved (as might be
    +useful for write-balancing for some RAM-like devices). Swap pages (and
    +evicted page-cache pages) are a great use for this kind of slower-than-RAM-
    +but-much-faster-than-disk "pseudo-RAM device" and the frontswap (and
    +cleancache) interface to transcendent memory provides a nice way to read
    +and write -- and indirectly "name" -- the pages.
    +
    +In the virtual case, the whole point of virtualization is to statistically
    +multiplex physical resources acrosst the varying demands of multiple
    +virtual machines. This is really hard to do with RAM and efforts to do
    +it well with no kernel changes have essentially failed (except in some
    +well-publicized special-case workloads). Frontswap -- and cleancache --
    +with a fairly small impact on the kernel, provides a huge amount
    +of flexibility for more dynamic, flexible RAM multiplexing.
    +Specifically, the Xen Transcendent Memory backend allows otherwise
    +"fallow" hypervisor-owned RAM to not only be "time-shared" between multiple
    +virtual machines, but the pages can be compressed and deduplicated to
    +optimize RAM utilization. And when guest OS's are induced to surrender
    +underutilized RAM (e.g. with "self-ballooning"), sudden unexpected
    +memory pressure may result in swapping; frontswap allows those pages
    +to be swapped to and from hypervisor RAM if overall host system memory
    +conditions allow.
    +
    +2) Sure there may be performance advantages in some situations, but
    + what's the space/time overhead of frontswap?
    +
    +If CONFIG_FRONTSWAP is disabled, every frontswap hook compiles into
    +nothingness and the only overhead is a few extra bytes per swapon'ed
    +swap device. If CONFIG_FRONTSWAP is enabled but no frontswap "backend"
    +registers, there is one extra global variable compared to zero for
    +every swap page read or written. If CONFIG_FRONTSWAP is enabled
    +AND a frontswap backend registers AND the backend fails every "put"
    +request (i.e. provides no memory despite claiming it might),
    +CPU overhead is still negligible -- and since every frontswap fail
    +precedes a swap page write-to-disk, the system is highly likely
    +to be I/O bound and using a small fraction of a percent of a CPU
    +will be irrelevant anyway.
    +
    +As for space, if CONFIG_FRONTSWAP is enabled AND a frontswap backend
    +registers, one bit is allocated for every swap page for every swap
    +device that is swapon'd. This is added to the EIGHT bits (which
    +was sixteen until about 2.6.34) that the kernel already allocates
    +for every swap page for every swap device that is swapon'd. (Hugh
    +Dickins has observed that frontswap could probably steal one of
    +the existing eight bits, but let's worry about that minor optimization
    +later.) For very large swap disks (which are rare) on a standard
    +4K pagesize, this is 1MB per 32GB swap.
    +
    +3) OK, how about a quick overview of what this frontswap patch does
    + in terms that a kernel hacker can grok?
    +
    +Let's assume that a frontswap "backend" has registered during
    +kernel initialization; this registration indicates that this
    +frontswap backend has access to some "memory" that is not directly
    +accessible by the kernel. Exactly how much memory it provides is
    +entirely dynamic and random.
    +
    +Whenever a swap-device is swapon'd frontswap_init() is called,
    +passing the swap device number (aka "type") as a parameter.
    +This notifies frontswap to expect attempts to "put" swap pages
    +associated with that number.
    +
    +Whenever the swap subsystem is readying a page to write to a swap
    +device (c.f swap_writepage()), frontswap_put_page is called. Frontswap
    +consults with the frontswap backend and if the backend says it does NOT
    +have room, frontswap_put_page returns -1 and the kernel swaps the page
    +to the swap device as normal. Note that the response from the frontswap
    +backend is unpredictable to the kernel; it may choose to never accept a
    +page, it could accept every ninth page, or it might accept every
    +page. But if the backend does accept a page, the data from the page
    +has already been copied and associated with the type and offset,
    +and the backend guarantees the persistence of the data. In this case,
    +frontswap sets a bit in the "frontswap_map" for the swap device
    +corresponding to the page offset on the swap device to which it would
    +otherwise have written the data.
    +
    +When the swap subsystem needs to swap-in a page (swap_readpage()),
    +it first calls frontswap_get_page() which checks the frontswap_map to
    +see if the page was earlier accepted by the frontswap backend. If
    +it was, the page of data is filled from the frontswap backend and
    +the swap-in is complete. If not, the normal swap-in code is
    +executed to obtain the page of data from the real swap device.
    +
    +So every time the frontswap backend accepts a page, a swap device read
    +and (potentially) a swap device write are replaced by a "frontswap backend
    +put" and (possibly) a "frontswap backend get", which are presumably much
    +faster.
    +
    +4) Can't frontswap be configured as a "special" swap device that is
    + just higher priority than any real swap device (e.g. like zswap)?
    +
    +No. Recall that acceptance of any swap page by the frontswap
    +backend is entirely unpredictable. This is critical to the definition
    +of frontswap because it grants completely dynamic discretion to the
    +backend. But since any "put" might fail, there must always be a real
    +slot on a real swap device to swap the page. Thus frontswap must be
    +implemented as a "shadow" to every swapon'd device with the potential
    +capability of holding every page that the swap device might have held
    +and the possibility that it might hold no pages at all.
    +On the downside, this also means that frontswap cannot contain more
    +pages than the total of swapon'd swap devices. For example, if NO
    +swap device is configured on some installation, frontswap is useless.
    +
    +Further, frontswap is entirely synchronous whereas a real swap
    +device is, by definition, asynchronous and uses block I/O. The
    +block I/O layer is not only unnecessary, but may perform "optimizations"
    +that are inappropriate for a RAM-oriented device including delaying
    +the write of some pages for a significant amount of time. Synchrony is
    +required to ensure the dynamicity of the backend and to avoid thorny race
    +conditions that would unnecessarily and greatly complicate frontswap
    +and/or the block I/O subsystem.
    +
    +In a virtualized environment, the dynamicity allows the hypervisor
    +(or host OS) to do "intelligent overcommit". For example, it can
    +choose to accept pages only until host-swapping might be imminent,
    +then force guests to do their own swapping. In zcache, "poorly"
    +compressible pages can be rejected, where "poorly" can itself be defined
    +dynamically depending on current memory constraints.
    +
    +5) Why this weird definition about "duplicate puts"? If a page
    + has been previously successfully put, can't it always be
    + successfully overwritten?
    +
    +Nearly always it can, but no, sometimes it cannot. Consider an example
    +where data is compressed and the original 4K page has been compressed
    +to 1K. Now an attempt is made to overwrite the page with data that
    +is non-compressible and so would take the entire 4K. But the backend
    +has no more space. In this case, the put must be rejected. Whenever
    +frontswap rejects a put that would overwrite, it also must flush
    +the old data and ensure that it is no longer accessible. Since the
    +swap subsystem then writes the new data to the read swap device,
    +this is the correct course of action to ensure coherency.
    +
    +6) What is frontswap_shrink for?
    +
    +When the (non-frontswap) swap subsystem swaps out a page to a real
    +swap device, that page is only taking up low-value pre-allocated disk
    +space. But if frontswap has placed a page in transcendent memory, that
    +page may be taking up valuable real estate. The frontswap_shrink
    +routine allows a process outside of the swap subsystem (such as
    +a userland service via the sysfs interface, or a kernel thread)
    +to force pages out of the memory managed by frontswap and back into
    +kernel-addressable memory.
    +
    +7) Why does the frontswap patch create the new include file swapfile.h?
    +
    +The frontswap code depends on some swap-subsystem-internal data
    +structures that have, over the years, moved back and forth between
    +static and global. This seemed a reasonable compromise: Define
    +them as global but declare them in a new include file that isn't
    +included by the large number of source files that include swap.h.
    +
    +Dan Magenheimer, last updated August 8, 2011

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