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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt b/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7587493c --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/pagemap.txt @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +pagemap, from the userspace perspective +--------------------------------------- + +pagemap is a new (as of 2.6.25) set of interfaces in the kernel that allow +userspace programs to examine the page tables and related information by +reading files in /proc. + +There are three components to pagemap: + + * /proc/pid/pagemap. This file lets a userspace process find out which + physical frame each virtual page is mapped to. It contains one 64-bit + value for each virtual page, containing the following data (from + fs/proc/task_mmu.c, above pagemap_read): + + * Bits 0-54 page frame number (PFN) if present + * Bits 0-4 swap type if swapped + * Bits 5-54 swap offset if swapped + * Bits 55-60 page shift (page size = 1<<page shift) + * Bit 61 page is file-page or shared-anon + * Bit 62 page swapped + * Bit 63 page present + + If the page is not present but in swap, then the PFN contains an + encoding of the swap file number and the page's offset into the + swap. Unmapped pages return a null PFN. This allows determining + precisely which pages are mapped (or in swap) and comparing mapped + pages between processes. + + Efficient users of this interface will use /proc/pid/maps to + determine which areas of memory are actually mapped and llseek to + skip over unmapped regions. + + * /proc/kpagecount. This file contains a 64-bit count of the number of + times each page is mapped, indexed by PFN. + + * /proc/kpageflags. This file contains a 64-bit set of flags for each + page, indexed by PFN. + + The flags are (from fs/proc/page.c, above kpageflags_read): + + 0. LOCKED + 1. ERROR + 2. REFERENCED + 3. UPTODATE + 4. DIRTY + 5. LRU + 6. ACTIVE + 7. SLAB + 8. WRITEBACK + 9. RECLAIM + 10. BUDDY + 11. MMAP + 12. ANON + 13. SWAPCACHE + 14. SWAPBACKED + 15. COMPOUND_HEAD + 16. COMPOUND_TAIL + 16. HUGE + 18. UNEVICTABLE + 19. HWPOISON + 20. NOPAGE + 21. KSM + 22. THP + +Short descriptions to the page flags: + + 0. LOCKED + page is being locked for exclusive access, eg. by undergoing read/write IO + + 7. SLAB + page is managed by the SLAB/SLOB/SLUB/SLQB kernel memory allocator + When compound page is used, SLUB/SLQB will only set this flag on the head + page; SLOB will not flag it at all. + +10. BUDDY + a free memory block managed by the buddy system allocator + The buddy system organizes free memory in blocks of various orders. + An order N block has 2^N physically contiguous pages, with the BUDDY flag + set for and _only_ for the first page. + +15. COMPOUND_HEAD +16. COMPOUND_TAIL + A compound page with order N consists of 2^N physically contiguous pages. + A compound page with order 2 takes the form of "HTTT", where H donates its + head page and T donates its tail page(s). The major consumers of compound + pages are hugeTLB pages (Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt), the SLUB etc. + memory allocators and various device drivers. However in this interface, + only huge/giga pages are made visible to end users. +17. HUGE + this is an integral part of a HugeTLB page + +19. HWPOISON + hardware detected memory corruption on this page: don't touch the data! + +20. NOPAGE + no page frame exists at the requested address + +21. KSM + identical memory pages dynamically shared between one or more processes + +22. THP + contiguous pages which construct transparent hugepages + + [IO related page flags] + 1. ERROR IO error occurred + 3. UPTODATE page has up-to-date data + ie. for file backed page: (in-memory data revision >= on-disk one) + 4. DIRTY page has been written to, hence contains new data + ie. for file backed page: (in-memory data revision > on-disk one) + 8. WRITEBACK page is being synced to disk + + [LRU related page flags] + 5. LRU page is in one of the LRU lists + 6. ACTIVE page is in the active LRU list +18. UNEVICTABLE page is in the unevictable (non-)LRU list + It is somehow pinned and not a candidate for LRU page reclaims, + eg. ramfs pages, shmctl(SHM_LOCK) and mlock() memory segments + 2. REFERENCED page has been referenced since last LRU list enqueue/requeue + 9. RECLAIM page will be reclaimed soon after its pageout IO completed +11. MMAP a memory mapped page +12. ANON a memory mapped page that is not part of a file +13. SWAPCACHE page is mapped to swap space, ie. has an associated swap entry +14. SWAPBACKED page is backed by swap/RAM + +The page-types tool in this directory can be used to query the above flags. + +Using pagemap to do something useful: + +The general procedure for using pagemap to find out about a process' memory +usage goes like this: + + 1. Read /proc/pid/maps to determine which parts of the memory space are + mapped to what. + 2. Select the maps you are interested in -- all of them, or a particular + library, or the stack or the heap, etc. + 3. Open /proc/pid/pagemap and seek to the pages you would like to examine. + 4. Read a u64 for each page from pagemap. + 5. Open /proc/kpagecount and/or /proc/kpageflags. For each PFN you just + read, seek to that entry in the file, and read the data you want. + +For example, to find the "unique set size" (USS), which is the amount of +memory that a process is using that is not shared with any other process, +you can go through every map in the process, find the PFNs, look those up +in kpagecount, and tally up the number of pages that are only referenced +once. + +Other notes: + +Reading from any of the files will return -EINVAL if you are not starting +the read on an 8-byte boundary (e.g., if you seeked an odd number of bytes +into the file), or if the size of the read is not a multiple of 8 bytes. |