diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/sysctl')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt | 38 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | 29 |
2 files changed, 56 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt index 9886c3d57fc2..c14374e71775 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt @@ -75,8 +75,10 @@ show up in /proc/sys/kernel: - shmall - shmmax [ sysv ipc ] - shmmni +- softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace - stop-a [ SPARC only ] - sysrq ==> Documentation/sysrq.txt +- sysctl_writes_strict - tainted - threads-max - unknown_nmi_panic @@ -762,6 +764,42 @@ without users and with a dead originative process will be destroyed. ============================================================== +sysctl_writes_strict: + +Control how file position affects the behavior of updating sysctl values +via the /proc/sys interface: + + -1 - Legacy per-write sysctl value handling, with no printk warnings. + Each write syscall must fully contain the sysctl value to be + written, and multiple writes on the same sysctl file descriptor + will rewrite the sysctl value, regardless of file position. + 0 - (default) Same behavior as above, but warn about processes that + perform writes to a sysctl file descriptor when the file position + is not 0. + 1 - Respect file position when writing sysctl strings. Multiple writes + will append to the sysctl value buffer. Anything past the max length + of the sysctl value buffer will be ignored. Writes to numeric sysctl + entries must always be at file position 0 and the value must be + fully contained in the buffer sent in the write syscall. + +============================================================== + +softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace: + +This value controls the soft lockup detector thread's behavior +when a soft lockup condition is detected as to whether or not +to gather further debug information. If enabled, each cpu will +be issued an NMI and instructed to capture stack trace. + +This feature is only applicable for architectures which support +NMI. + +0: do nothing. This is the default behavior. + +1: on detection capture more debug information. + +============================================================== + tainted: Non-zero if the kernel has been tainted. Numeric values, which diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt index dd9d0e33b443..4415aa915681 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt @@ -702,7 +702,8 @@ The batch value of each per cpu pagelist is also updated as a result. It is set to pcp->high/4. The upper limit of batch is (PAGE_SHIFT * 8) The initial value is zero. Kernel does not use this value at boot time to set -the high water marks for each per cpu page list. +the high water marks for each per cpu page list. If the user writes '0' to this +sysctl, it will revert to this default behavior. ============================================================== @@ -746,8 +747,8 @@ Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory. vfs_cache_pressure ------------------ -Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for -caching of directory and inode objects. +This percentage value controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim +the memory which is used for caching of directory and inode objects. At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and @@ -757,6 +758,11 @@ never reclaim dentries and inodes due to memory pressure and this can easily lead to out-of-memory conditions. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100 causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes. +Increasing vfs_cache_pressure significantly beyond 100 may have negative +performance impact. Reclaim code needs to take various locks to find freeable +directory and inode objects. With vfs_cache_pressure=1000, it will look for +ten times more freeable objects than there are. + ============================================================== zone_reclaim_mode: @@ -772,16 +778,17 @@ This is value ORed together of 2 = Zone reclaim writes dirty pages out 4 = Zone reclaim swaps pages -zone_reclaim_mode is set during bootup to 1 if it is determined that pages -from remote zones will cause a measurable performance reduction. The -page allocator will then reclaim easily reusable pages (those page -cache pages that are currently not used) before allocating off node pages. - -It may be beneficial to switch off zone reclaim if the system is -used for a file server and all of memory should be used for caching files -from disk. In that case the caching effect is more important than +zone_reclaim_mode is disabled by default. For file servers or workloads +that benefit from having their data cached, zone_reclaim_mode should be +left disabled as the caching effect is likely to be more important than data locality. +zone_reclaim may be enabled if it's known that the workload is partitioned +such that each partition fits within a NUMA node and that accessing remote +memory would cause a measurable performance reduction. The page allocator +will then reclaim easily reusable pages (those page cache pages that are +currently not used) before allocating off node pages. + Allowing zone reclaim to write out pages stops processes that are writing large amounts of data from dirtying pages on other nodes. Zone reclaim will write out dirty pages if a zone fills up and so effectively |