Thread (21 messages) 21 messages, 5 authors, 2016-02-12

Re: computing drop-able caches

From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Date: 2016-01-29 22:33:46
Also in: linux-fsdevel, lkml

On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 01:21:47PM -0800, Daniel Walker wrote:
On 01/28/2016 05:55 PM, Johannes Weiner wrote:
quoted
On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 05:29:41PM -0800, Daniel Walker wrote:
quoted
On 01/28/2016 05:03 PM, Daniel Walker wrote:
[regarding MemAvaiable]

This new metric purportedly helps usrespace assess available memory. But,
its again based on heuristic, it takes 1/2 of page cache as reclaimable..
No, it takes the smaller value of cache/2 and the low watermark, which
is a fraction of memory. Actually, that does look a little weird. Rik?

We don't age cache without memory pressure, you don't know how much is
used until you start taking some away. Heuristics is all we can offer.
With a simple busybox root system I get this,

MemTotal:          16273996 kB
MemFree:          16137920 kB
MemAvailable:   16046132 kB

shouldn't MemAvailable be at least the same as MemFree ? I changed the code
somewhat so it subtracted the wmark_low only, or the pagecache/2 only, both
are still under MemFree. This system has very little drop-able caches.
No, a portion of memory is reserved for the kernel and not available
to userland. If the kernel doesn't use it it will remain free. Hence
the lower MemAvailable.

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