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ksm: add profit monitoring documentation
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Add the description of KSM profit and how to determine it separately in
system-wide range and inner a single process.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220830144003.299870-1-xu.xin16@zte.com.cn
Signed-off-by: xu xin <xu.xin16@zte.com.cn>
Reviewed-by: Xiaokai Ran <ran.xiaokai@zte.com.cn>
Reviewed-by: Yang Yang <yang.yang29@zte.com.cn>
Reviewed-by: Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com>
Cc: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Izik Eidus <izik.eidus@ravellosystems.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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xu xin authored and Andrew Morton committed Sep 27, 2022
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36 changes: 36 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst
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Expand Up @@ -184,6 +184,42 @@ The maximum possible ``pages_sharing/pages_shared`` ratio is limited by the
``max_page_sharing`` tunable. To increase the ratio ``max_page_sharing`` must
be increased accordingly.

Monitoring KSM profit
=====================

KSM can save memory by merging identical pages, but also can consume
additional memory, because it needs to generate a number of rmap_items to
save each scanned page's brief rmap information. Some of these pages may
be merged, but some may not be abled to be merged after being checked
several times, which are unprofitable memory consumed.

1) How to determine whether KSM save memory or consume memory in system-wide
range? Here is a simple approximate calculation for reference::

general_profit =~ pages_sharing * sizeof(page) - (all_rmap_items) *
sizeof(rmap_item);

where all_rmap_items can be easily obtained by summing ``pages_sharing``,
``pages_shared``, ``pages_unshared`` and ``pages_volatile``.

2) The KSM profit inner a single process can be similarly obtained by the
following approximate calculation::

process_profit =~ ksm_merging_pages * sizeof(page) -
ksm_rmap_items * sizeof(rmap_item).

where ksm_merging_pages is shown under the directory ``/proc/<pid>/``,
and ksm_rmap_items is shown in ``/proc/<pid>/ksm_stat``.

From the perspective of application, a high ratio of ``ksm_rmap_items`` to
``ksm_merging_pages`` means a bad madvise-applied policy, so developers or
administrators have to rethink how to change madvise policy. Giving an example
for reference, a page's size is usually 4K, and the rmap_item's size is
separately 32B on 32-bit CPU architecture and 64B on 64-bit CPU architecture.
so if the ``ksm_rmap_items/ksm_merging_pages`` ratio exceeds 64 on 64-bit CPU
or exceeds 128 on 32-bit CPU, then the app's madvise policy should be dropped,
because the ksm profit is approximately zero or negative.

Monitoring KSM events
=====================

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