c638072107
This updates the DAMON documents for the physical memory address space monitoring support. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20211012205711.29216-8-sj@kernel.org Signed-off-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org> Cc: Amit Shah <amit@kernel.org> Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> Cc: Brendan Higgins <brendanhiggins@google.com> Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> Cc: David Rienjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.com> Cc: Greg Thelen <gthelen@google.com> Cc: Jonathan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@huawei.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Leonard Foerster <foersleo@amazon.de> Cc: Marco Elver <elver@google.com> Cc: Markus Boehme <markubo@amazon.de> Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com> Cc: Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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2.2 KiB
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51 lines
2.2 KiB
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.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
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==========================
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Frequently Asked Questions
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==========================
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Why a new subsystem, instead of extending perf or other user space tools?
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=========================================================================
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First, because it needs to be lightweight as much as possible so that it can be
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used online, any unnecessary overhead such as kernel - user space context
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switching cost should be avoided. Second, DAMON aims to be used by other
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programs including the kernel. Therefore, having a dependency on specific
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tools like perf is not desirable. These are the two biggest reasons why DAMON
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is implemented in the kernel space.
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Can 'idle pages tracking' or 'perf mem' substitute DAMON?
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=========================================================
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Idle page tracking is a low level primitive for access check of the physical
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address space. 'perf mem' is similar, though it can use sampling to minimize
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the overhead. On the other hand, DAMON is a higher-level framework for the
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monitoring of various address spaces. It is focused on memory management
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optimization and provides sophisticated accuracy/overhead handling mechanisms.
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Therefore, 'idle pages tracking' and 'perf mem' could provide a subset of
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DAMON's output, but cannot substitute DAMON.
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Does DAMON support virtual memory only?
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=======================================
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No. The core of the DAMON is address space independent. The address space
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specific low level primitive parts including monitoring target regions
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constructions and actual access checks can be implemented and configured on the
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DAMON core by the users. In this way, DAMON users can monitor any address
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space with any access check technique.
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Nonetheless, DAMON provides vma/rmap tracking and PTE Accessed bit check based
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implementations of the address space dependent functions for the virtual memory
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and the physical memory by default, for a reference and convenient use.
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Can I simply monitor page granularity?
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======================================
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Yes. You can do so by setting the ``min_nr_regions`` attribute higher than the
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working set size divided by the page size. Because the monitoring target
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regions size is forced to be ``>=page size``, the region split will make no
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effect.
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