78f39084b4
We must add hugetlb_free_vmemmap=on (or "off") to the boot cmdline and
reboot the server to enable or disable the feature of optimizing vmemmap
pages associated with HugeTLB pages. However, rebooting usually takes a
long time. So add a sysctl to enable or disable the feature at runtime
without rebooting. Why we need this? There are 3 use cases.
1) The feature of minimizing overhead of struct page associated with
each HugeTLB is disabled by default without passing
"hugetlb_free_vmemmap=on" to the boot cmdline. When we (ByteDance)
deliver the servers to the users who want to enable this feature, they
have to configure the grub (change boot cmdline) and reboot the
servers, whereas rebooting usually takes a long time (we have thousands
of servers). It's a very bad experience for the users. So we need a
approach to enable this feature after rebooting. This is a use case in
our practical environment.
2) Some use cases are that HugeTLB pages are allocated 'on the fly'
instead of being pulled from the HugeTLB pool, those workloads would be
affected with this feature enabled. Those workloads could be
identified by the characteristics of they never explicitly allocating
huge pages with 'nr_hugepages' but only set 'nr_overcommit_hugepages'
and then let the pages be allocated from the buddy allocator at fault
time. We can confirm it is a real use case from the commit
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|---|---|---|
| Documentation | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| arch | ||
| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
README
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.