0001 ===============================
0002 Documentation for /proc/sys/vm/
0003 ===============================
0004
0005 kernel version 2.6.29
0006
0007 Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>
0008
0009 Copyright (c) 2008 Peter W. Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com>
0010
0011 For general info and legal blurb, please look in index.rst.
0012
0013 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0014
0015 This file contains the documentation for the sysctl files in
0016 /proc/sys/vm and is valid for Linux kernel version 2.6.29.
0017
0018 The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation
0019 of the virtual memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel and
0020 the writeout of dirty data to disk.
0021
0022 Default values and initialization routines for most of these
0023 files can be found in mm/swap.c.
0024
0025 Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
0026
0027 - admin_reserve_kbytes
0028 - compact_memory
0029 - compaction_proactiveness
0030 - compact_unevictable_allowed
0031 - dirty_background_bytes
0032 - dirty_background_ratio
0033 - dirty_bytes
0034 - dirty_expire_centisecs
0035 - dirty_ratio
0036 - dirtytime_expire_seconds
0037 - dirty_writeback_centisecs
0038 - drop_caches
0039 - extfrag_threshold
0040 - highmem_is_dirtyable
0041 - hugetlb_shm_group
0042 - laptop_mode
0043 - legacy_va_layout
0044 - lowmem_reserve_ratio
0045 - max_map_count
0046 - memory_failure_early_kill
0047 - memory_failure_recovery
0048 - min_free_kbytes
0049 - min_slab_ratio
0050 - min_unmapped_ratio
0051 - mmap_min_addr
0052 - mmap_rnd_bits
0053 - mmap_rnd_compat_bits
0054 - nr_hugepages
0055 - nr_hugepages_mempolicy
0056 - nr_overcommit_hugepages
0057 - nr_trim_pages (only if CONFIG_MMU=n)
0058 - numa_zonelist_order
0059 - oom_dump_tasks
0060 - oom_kill_allocating_task
0061 - overcommit_kbytes
0062 - overcommit_memory
0063 - overcommit_ratio
0064 - page-cluster
0065 - page_lock_unfairness
0066 - panic_on_oom
0067 - percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
0068 - stat_interval
0069 - stat_refresh
0070 - numa_stat
0071 - swappiness
0072 - unprivileged_userfaultfd
0073 - user_reserve_kbytes
0074 - vfs_cache_pressure
0075 - watermark_boost_factor
0076 - watermark_scale_factor
0077 - zone_reclaim_mode
0078
0079
0080 admin_reserve_kbytes
0081 ====================
0082
0083 The amount of free memory in the system that should be reserved for users
0084 with the capability cap_sys_admin.
0085
0086 admin_reserve_kbytes defaults to min(3% of free pages, 8MB)
0087
0088 That should provide enough for the admin to log in and kill a process,
0089 if necessary, under the default overcommit 'guess' mode.
0090
0091 Systems running under overcommit 'never' should increase this to account
0092 for the full Virtual Memory Size of programs used to recover. Otherwise,
0093 root may not be able to log in to recover the system.
0094
0095 How do you calculate a minimum useful reserve?
0096
0097 sshd or login + bash (or some other shell) + top (or ps, kill, etc.)
0098
0099 For overcommit 'guess', we can sum resident set sizes (RSS).
0100 On x86_64 this is about 8MB.
0101
0102 For overcommit 'never', we can take the max of their virtual sizes (VSZ)
0103 and add the sum of their RSS.
0104 On x86_64 this is about 128MB.
0105
0106 Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory.
0107
0108
0109 compact_memory
0110 ==============
0111
0112 Available only when CONFIG_COMPACTION is set. When 1 is written to the file,
0113 all zones are compacted such that free memory is available in contiguous
0114 blocks where possible. This can be important for example in the allocation of
0115 huge pages although processes will also directly compact memory as required.
0116
0117 compaction_proactiveness
0118 ========================
0119
0120 This tunable takes a value in the range [0, 100] with a default value of
0121 20. This tunable determines how aggressively compaction is done in the
0122 background. Write of a non zero value to this tunable will immediately
0123 trigger the proactive compaction. Setting it to 0 disables proactive compaction.
0124
0125 Note that compaction has a non-trivial system-wide impact as pages
0126 belonging to different processes are moved around, which could also lead
0127 to latency spikes in unsuspecting applications. The kernel employs
0128 various heuristics to avoid wasting CPU cycles if it detects that
0129 proactive compaction is not being effective.
0130
0131 Be careful when setting it to extreme values like 100, as that may
0132 cause excessive background compaction activity.
0133
0134 compact_unevictable_allowed
0135 ===========================
0136
0137 Available only when CONFIG_COMPACTION is set. When set to 1, compaction is
0138 allowed to examine the unevictable lru (mlocked pages) for pages to compact.
0139 This should be used on systems where stalls for minor page faults are an
0140 acceptable trade for large contiguous free memory. Set to 0 to prevent
0141 compaction from moving pages that are unevictable. Default value is 1.
0142 On CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT the default value is 0 in order to avoid a page fault, due
0143 to compaction, which would block the task from becoming active until the fault
0144 is resolved.
0145
0146
0147 dirty_background_bytes
0148 ======================
0149
0150 Contains the amount of dirty memory at which the background kernel
0151 flusher threads will start writeback.
0152
0153 Note:
0154 dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart of dirty_background_ratio. Only
0155 one of them may be specified at a time. When one sysctl is written it is
0156 immediately taken into account to evaluate the dirty memory limits and the
0157 other appears as 0 when read.
0158
0159
0160 dirty_background_ratio
0161 ======================
0162
0163 Contains, as a percentage of total available memory that contains free pages
0164 and reclaimable pages, the number of pages at which the background kernel
0165 flusher threads will start writing out dirty data.
0166
0167 The total available memory is not equal to total system memory.
0168
0169
0170 dirty_bytes
0171 ===========
0172
0173 Contains the amount of dirty memory at which a process generating disk writes
0174 will itself start writeback.
0175
0176 Note: dirty_bytes is the counterpart of dirty_ratio. Only one of them may be
0177 specified at a time. When one sysctl is written it is immediately taken into
0178 account to evaluate the dirty memory limits and the other appears as 0 when
0179 read.
0180
0181 Note: the minimum value allowed for dirty_bytes is two pages (in bytes); any
0182 value lower than this limit will be ignored and the old configuration will be
0183 retained.
0184
0185
0186 dirty_expire_centisecs
0187 ======================
0188
0189 This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible
0190 for writeout by the kernel flusher threads. It is expressed in 100'ths
0191 of a second. Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this
0192 interval will be written out next time a flusher thread wakes up.
0193
0194
0195 dirty_ratio
0196 ===========
0197
0198 Contains, as a percentage of total available memory that contains free pages
0199 and reclaimable pages, the number of pages at which a process which is
0200 generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty data.
0201
0202 The total available memory is not equal to total system memory.
0203
0204
0205 dirtytime_expire_seconds
0206 ========================
0207
0208 When a lazytime inode is constantly having its pages dirtied, the inode with
0209 an updated timestamp will never get chance to be written out. And, if the
0210 only thing that has happened on the file system is a dirtytime inode caused
0211 by an atime update, a worker will be scheduled to make sure that inode
0212 eventually gets pushed out to disk. This tunable is used to define when dirty
0213 inode is old enough to be eligible for writeback by the kernel flusher threads.
0214 And, it is also used as the interval to wakeup dirtytime_writeback thread.
0215
0216
0217 dirty_writeback_centisecs
0218 =========================
0219
0220 The kernel flusher threads will periodically wake up and write `old` data
0221 out to disk. This tunable expresses the interval between those wakeups, in
0222 100'ths of a second.
0223
0224 Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether.
0225
0226
0227 drop_caches
0228 ===========
0229
0230 Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, as well as
0231 reclaimable slab objects like dentries and inodes. Once dropped, their
0232 memory becomes free.
0233
0234 To free pagecache::
0235
0236 echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
0237
0238 To free reclaimable slab objects (includes dentries and inodes)::
0239
0240 echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
0241
0242 To free slab objects and pagecache::
0243
0244 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
0245
0246 This is a non-destructive operation and will not free any dirty objects.
0247 To increase the number of objects freed by this operation, the user may run
0248 `sync` prior to writing to /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches. This will minimize the
0249 number of dirty objects on the system and create more candidates to be
0250 dropped.
0251
0252 This file is not a means to control the growth of the various kernel caches
0253 (inodes, dentries, pagecache, etc...) These objects are automatically
0254 reclaimed by the kernel when memory is needed elsewhere on the system.
0255
0256 Use of this file can cause performance problems. Since it discards cached
0257 objects, it may cost a significant amount of I/O and CPU to recreate the
0258 dropped objects, especially if they were under heavy use. Because of this,
0259 use outside of a testing or debugging environment is not recommended.
0260
0261 You may see informational messages in your kernel log when this file is
0262 used::
0263
0264 cat (1234): drop_caches: 3
0265
0266 These are informational only. They do not mean that anything is wrong
0267 with your system. To disable them, echo 4 (bit 2) into drop_caches.
0268
0269
0270 extfrag_threshold
0271 =================
0272
0273 This parameter affects whether the kernel will compact memory or direct
0274 reclaim to satisfy a high-order allocation. The extfrag/extfrag_index file in
0275 debugfs shows what the fragmentation index for each order is in each zone in
0276 the system. Values tending towards 0 imply allocations would fail due to lack
0277 of memory, values towards 1000 imply failures are due to fragmentation and -1
0278 implies that the allocation will succeed as long as watermarks are met.
0279
0280 The kernel will not compact memory in a zone if the
0281 fragmentation index is <= extfrag_threshold. The default value is 500.
0282
0283
0284 highmem_is_dirtyable
0285 ====================
0286
0287 Available only for systems with CONFIG_HIGHMEM enabled (32b systems).
0288
0289 This parameter controls whether the high memory is considered for dirty
0290 writers throttling. This is not the case by default which means that
0291 only the amount of memory directly visible/usable by the kernel can
0292 be dirtied. As a result, on systems with a large amount of memory and
0293 lowmem basically depleted writers might be throttled too early and
0294 streaming writes can get very slow.
0295
0296 Changing the value to non zero would allow more memory to be dirtied
0297 and thus allow writers to write more data which can be flushed to the
0298 storage more effectively. Note this also comes with a risk of pre-mature
0299 OOM killer because some writers (e.g. direct block device writes) can
0300 only use the low memory and they can fill it up with dirty data without
0301 any throttling.
0302
0303
0304 hugetlb_shm_group
0305 =================
0306
0307 hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV
0308 shared memory segment using hugetlb page.
0309
0310
0311 laptop_mode
0312 ===========
0313
0314 laptop_mode is a knob that controls "laptop mode". All the things that are
0315 controlled by this knob are discussed in Documentation/admin-guide/laptops/laptop-mode.rst.
0316
0317
0318 legacy_va_layout
0319 ================
0320
0321 If non-zero, this sysctl disables the new 32-bit mmap layout - the kernel
0322 will use the legacy (2.4) layout for all processes.
0323
0324
0325 lowmem_reserve_ratio
0326 ====================
0327
0328 For some specialised workloads on highmem machines it is dangerous for
0329 the kernel to allow process memory to be allocated from the "lowmem"
0330 zone. This is because that memory could then be pinned via the mlock()
0331 system call, or by unavailability of swapspace.
0332
0333 And on large highmem machines this lack of reclaimable lowmem memory
0334 can be fatal.
0335
0336 So the Linux page allocator has a mechanism which prevents allocations
0337 which *could* use highmem from using too much lowmem. This means that
0338 a certain amount of lowmem is defended from the possibility of being
0339 captured into pinned user memory.
0340
0341 (The same argument applies to the old 16 megabyte ISA DMA region. This
0342 mechanism will also defend that region from allocations which could use
0343 highmem or lowmem).
0344
0345 The `lowmem_reserve_ratio` tunable determines how aggressive the kernel is
0346 in defending these lower zones.
0347
0348 If you have a machine which uses highmem or ISA DMA and your
0349 applications are using mlock(), or if you are running with no swap then
0350 you probably should change the lowmem_reserve_ratio setting.
0351
0352 The lowmem_reserve_ratio is an array. You can see them by reading this file::
0353
0354 % cat /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_reserve_ratio
0355 256 256 32
0356
0357 But, these values are not used directly. The kernel calculates # of protection
0358 pages for each zones from them. These are shown as array of protection pages
0359 in /proc/zoneinfo like followings. (This is an example of x86-64 box).
0360 Each zone has an array of protection pages like this::
0361
0362 Node 0, zone DMA
0363 pages free 1355
0364 min 3
0365 low 3
0366 high 4
0367 :
0368 :
0369 numa_other 0
0370 protection: (0, 2004, 2004, 2004)
0371 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
0372 pagesets
0373 cpu: 0 pcp: 0
0374 :
0375
0376 These protections are added to score to judge whether this zone should be used
0377 for page allocation or should be reclaimed.
0378
0379 In this example, if normal pages (index=2) are required to this DMA zone and
0380 watermark[WMARK_HIGH] is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should
0381 not be used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
0382 (4 + 2004 = 2008). If this protection value is 0, this zone would be used for
0383 normal page requirement. If requirement is DMA zone(index=0), protection[0]
0384 (=0) is used.
0385
0386 zone[i]'s protection[j] is calculated by following expression::
0387
0388 (i < j):
0389 zone[i]->protection[j]
0390 = (total sums of managed_pages from zone[i+1] to zone[j] on the node)
0391 / lowmem_reserve_ratio[i];
0392 (i = j):
0393 (should not be protected. = 0;
0394 (i > j):
0395 (not necessary, but looks 0)
0396
0397 The default values of lowmem_reserve_ratio[i] are
0398
0399 === ====================================
0400 256 (if zone[i] means DMA or DMA32 zone)
0401 32 (others)
0402 === ====================================
0403
0404 As above expression, they are reciprocal number of ratio.
0405 256 means 1/256. # of protection pages becomes about "0.39%" of total managed
0406 pages of higher zones on the node.
0407
0408 If you would like to protect more pages, smaller values are effective.
0409 The minimum value is 1 (1/1 -> 100%). The value less than 1 completely
0410 disables protection of the pages.
0411
0412
0413 max_map_count:
0414 ==============
0415
0416 This file contains the maximum number of memory map areas a process
0417 may have. Memory map areas are used as a side-effect of calling
0418 malloc, directly by mmap, mprotect, and madvise, and also when loading
0419 shared libraries.
0420
0421 While most applications need less than a thousand maps, certain
0422 programs, particularly malloc debuggers, may consume lots of them,
0423 e.g., up to one or two maps per allocation.
0424
0425 The default value is 65530.
0426
0427
0428 memory_failure_early_kill:
0429 ==========================
0430
0431 Control how to kill processes when uncorrected memory error (typically
0432 a 2bit error in a memory module) is detected in the background by hardware
0433 that cannot be handled by the kernel. In some cases (like the page
0434 still having a valid copy on disk) the kernel will handle the failure
0435 transparently without affecting any applications. But if there is
0436 no other uptodate copy of the data it will kill to prevent any data
0437 corruptions from propagating.
0438
0439 1: Kill all processes that have the corrupted and not reloadable page mapped
0440 as soon as the corruption is detected. Note this is not supported
0441 for a few types of pages, like kernel internally allocated data or
0442 the swap cache, but works for the majority of user pages.
0443
0444 0: Only unmap the corrupted page from all processes and only kill a process
0445 who tries to access it.
0446
0447 The kill is done using a catchable SIGBUS with BUS_MCEERR_AO, so processes can
0448 handle this if they want to.
0449
0450 This is only active on architectures/platforms with advanced machine
0451 check handling and depends on the hardware capabilities.
0452
0453 Applications can override this setting individually with the PR_MCE_KILL prctl
0454
0455
0456 memory_failure_recovery
0457 =======================
0458
0459 Enable memory failure recovery (when supported by the platform)
0460
0461 1: Attempt recovery.
0462
0463 0: Always panic on a memory failure.
0464
0465
0466 min_free_kbytes
0467 ===============
0468
0469 This is used to force the Linux VM to keep a minimum number
0470 of kilobytes free. The VM uses this number to compute a
0471 watermark[WMARK_MIN] value for each lowmem zone in the system.
0472 Each lowmem zone gets a number of reserved free pages based
0473 proportionally on its size.
0474
0475 Some minimal amount of memory is needed to satisfy PF_MEMALLOC
0476 allocations; if you set this to lower than 1024KB, your system will
0477 become subtly broken, and prone to deadlock under high loads.
0478
0479 Setting this too high will OOM your machine instantly.
0480
0481
0482 min_slab_ratio
0483 ==============
0484
0485 This is available only on NUMA kernels.
0486
0487 A percentage of the total pages in each zone. On Zone reclaim
0488 (fallback from the local zone occurs) slabs will be reclaimed if more
0489 than this percentage of pages in a zone are reclaimable slab pages.
0490 This insures that the slab growth stays under control even in NUMA
0491 systems that rarely perform global reclaim.
0492
0493 The default is 5 percent.
0494
0495 Note that slab reclaim is triggered in a per zone / node fashion.
0496 The process of reclaiming slab memory is currently not node specific
0497 and may not be fast.
0498
0499
0500 min_unmapped_ratio
0501 ==================
0502
0503 This is available only on NUMA kernels.
0504
0505 This is a percentage of the total pages in each zone. Zone reclaim will
0506 only occur if more than this percentage of pages are in a state that
0507 zone_reclaim_mode allows to be reclaimed.
0508
0509 If zone_reclaim_mode has the value 4 OR'd, then the percentage is compared
0510 against all file-backed unmapped pages including swapcache pages and tmpfs
0511 files. Otherwise, only unmapped pages backed by normal files but not tmpfs
0512 files and similar are considered.
0513
0514 The default is 1 percent.
0515
0516
0517 mmap_min_addr
0518 =============
0519
0520 This file indicates the amount of address space which a user process will
0521 be restricted from mmapping. Since kernel null dereference bugs could
0522 accidentally operate based on the information in the first couple of pages
0523 of memory userspace processes should not be allowed to write to them. By
0524 default this value is set to 0 and no protections will be enforced by the
0525 security module. Setting this value to something like 64k will allow the
0526 vast majority of applications to work correctly and provide defense in depth
0527 against future potential kernel bugs.
0528
0529
0530 mmap_rnd_bits
0531 =============
0532
0533 This value can be used to select the number of bits to use to
0534 determine the random offset to the base address of vma regions
0535 resulting from mmap allocations on architectures which support
0536 tuning address space randomization. This value will be bounded
0537 by the architecture's minimum and maximum supported values.
0538
0539 This value can be changed after boot using the
0540 /proc/sys/vm/mmap_rnd_bits tunable
0541
0542
0543 mmap_rnd_compat_bits
0544 ====================
0545
0546 This value can be used to select the number of bits to use to
0547 determine the random offset to the base address of vma regions
0548 resulting from mmap allocations for applications run in
0549 compatibility mode on architectures which support tuning address
0550 space randomization. This value will be bounded by the
0551 architecture's minimum and maximum supported values.
0552
0553 This value can be changed after boot using the
0554 /proc/sys/vm/mmap_rnd_compat_bits tunable
0555
0556
0557 nr_hugepages
0558 ============
0559
0560 Change the minimum size of the hugepage pool.
0561
0562 See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst
0563
0564
0565 hugetlb_optimize_vmemmap
0566 ========================
0567
0568 This knob is not available when the size of 'struct page' (a structure defined
0569 in include/linux/mm_types.h) is not power of two (an unusual system config could
0570 result in this).
0571
0572 Enable (set to 1) or disable (set to 0) HugeTLB Vmemmap Optimization (HVO).
0573
0574 Once enabled, the vmemmap pages of subsequent allocation of HugeTLB pages from
0575 buddy allocator will be optimized (7 pages per 2MB HugeTLB page and 4095 pages
0576 per 1GB HugeTLB page), whereas already allocated HugeTLB pages will not be
0577 optimized. When those optimized HugeTLB pages are freed from the HugeTLB pool
0578 to the buddy allocator, the vmemmap pages representing that range needs to be
0579 remapped again and the vmemmap pages discarded earlier need to be rellocated
0580 again. If your use case is that HugeTLB pages are allocated 'on the fly' (e.g.
0581 never explicitly allocating HugeTLB pages with 'nr_hugepages' but only set
0582 'nr_overcommit_hugepages', those overcommitted HugeTLB pages are allocated 'on
0583 the fly') instead of being pulled from the HugeTLB pool, you should weigh the
0584 benefits of memory savings against the more overhead (~2x slower than before)
0585 of allocation or freeing HugeTLB pages between the HugeTLB pool and the buddy
0586 allocator. Another behavior to note is that if the system is under heavy memory
0587 pressure, it could prevent the user from freeing HugeTLB pages from the HugeTLB
0588 pool to the buddy allocator since the allocation of vmemmap pages could be
0589 failed, you have to retry later if your system encounter this situation.
0590
0591 Once disabled, the vmemmap pages of subsequent allocation of HugeTLB pages from
0592 buddy allocator will not be optimized meaning the extra overhead at allocation
0593 time from buddy allocator disappears, whereas already optimized HugeTLB pages
0594 will not be affected. If you want to make sure there are no optimized HugeTLB
0595 pages, you can set "nr_hugepages" to 0 first and then disable this. Note that
0596 writing 0 to nr_hugepages will make any "in use" HugeTLB pages become surplus
0597 pages. So, those surplus pages are still optimized until they are no longer
0598 in use. You would need to wait for those surplus pages to be released before
0599 there are no optimized pages in the system.
0600
0601
0602 nr_hugepages_mempolicy
0603 ======================
0604
0605 Change the size of the hugepage pool at run-time on a specific
0606 set of NUMA nodes.
0607
0608 See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst
0609
0610
0611 nr_overcommit_hugepages
0612 =======================
0613
0614 Change the maximum size of the hugepage pool. The maximum is
0615 nr_hugepages + nr_overcommit_hugepages.
0616
0617 See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst
0618
0619
0620 nr_trim_pages
0621 =============
0622
0623 This is available only on NOMMU kernels.
0624
0625 This value adjusts the excess page trimming behaviour of power-of-2 aligned
0626 NOMMU mmap allocations.
0627
0628 A value of 0 disables trimming of allocations entirely, while a value of 1
0629 trims excess pages aggressively. Any value >= 1 acts as the watermark where
0630 trimming of allocations is initiated.
0631
0632 The default value is 1.
0633
0634 See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/nommu-mmap.rst for more information.
0635
0636
0637 numa_zonelist_order
0638 ===================
0639
0640 This sysctl is only for NUMA and it is deprecated. Anything but
0641 Node order will fail!
0642
0643 'where the memory is allocated from' is controlled by zonelists.
0644
0645 (This documentation ignores ZONE_HIGHMEM/ZONE_DMA32 for simple explanation.
0646 you may be able to read ZONE_DMA as ZONE_DMA32...)
0647
0648 In non-NUMA case, a zonelist for GFP_KERNEL is ordered as following.
0649 ZONE_NORMAL -> ZONE_DMA
0650 This means that a memory allocation request for GFP_KERNEL will
0651 get memory from ZONE_DMA only when ZONE_NORMAL is not available.
0652
0653 In NUMA case, you can think of following 2 types of order.
0654 Assume 2 node NUMA and below is zonelist of Node(0)'s GFP_KERNEL::
0655
0656 (A) Node(0) ZONE_NORMAL -> Node(0) ZONE_DMA -> Node(1) ZONE_NORMAL
0657 (B) Node(0) ZONE_NORMAL -> Node(1) ZONE_NORMAL -> Node(0) ZONE_DMA.
0658
0659 Type(A) offers the best locality for processes on Node(0), but ZONE_DMA
0660 will be used before ZONE_NORMAL exhaustion. This increases possibility of
0661 out-of-memory(OOM) of ZONE_DMA because ZONE_DMA is tend to be small.
0662
0663 Type(B) cannot offer the best locality but is more robust against OOM of
0664 the DMA zone.
0665
0666 Type(A) is called as "Node" order. Type (B) is "Zone" order.
0667
0668 "Node order" orders the zonelists by node, then by zone within each node.
0669 Specify "[Nn]ode" for node order
0670
0671 "Zone Order" orders the zonelists by zone type, then by node within each
0672 zone. Specify "[Zz]one" for zone order.
0673
0674 Specify "[Dd]efault" to request automatic configuration.
0675
0676 On 32-bit, the Normal zone needs to be preserved for allocations accessible
0677 by the kernel, so "zone" order will be selected.
0678
0679 On 64-bit, devices that require DMA32/DMA are relatively rare, so "node"
0680 order will be selected.
0681
0682 Default order is recommended unless this is causing problems for your
0683 system/application.
0684
0685
0686 oom_dump_tasks
0687 ==============
0688
0689 Enables a system-wide task dump (excluding kernel threads) to be produced
0690 when the kernel performs an OOM-killing and includes such information as
0691 pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, pgtables_bytes, swapents, oom_score_adj
0692 score, and name. This is helpful to determine why the OOM killer was
0693 invoked, to identify the rogue task that caused it, and to determine why
0694 the OOM killer chose the task it did to kill.
0695
0696 If this is set to zero, this information is suppressed. On very
0697 large systems with thousands of tasks it may not be feasible to dump
0698 the memory state information for each one. Such systems should not
0699 be forced to incur a performance penalty in OOM conditions when the
0700 information may not be desired.
0701
0702 If this is set to non-zero, this information is shown whenever the
0703 OOM killer actually kills a memory-hogging task.
0704
0705 The default value is 1 (enabled).
0706
0707
0708 oom_kill_allocating_task
0709 ========================
0710
0711 This enables or disables killing the OOM-triggering task in
0712 out-of-memory situations.
0713
0714 If this is set to zero, the OOM killer will scan through the entire
0715 tasklist and select a task based on heuristics to kill. This normally
0716 selects a rogue memory-hogging task that frees up a large amount of
0717 memory when killed.
0718
0719 If this is set to non-zero, the OOM killer simply kills the task that
0720 triggered the out-of-memory condition. This avoids the expensive
0721 tasklist scan.
0722
0723 If panic_on_oom is selected, it takes precedence over whatever value
0724 is used in oom_kill_allocating_task.
0725
0726 The default value is 0.
0727
0728
0729 overcommit_kbytes
0730 =================
0731
0732 When overcommit_memory is set to 2, the committed address space is not
0733 permitted to exceed swap plus this amount of physical RAM. See below.
0734
0735 Note: overcommit_kbytes is the counterpart of overcommit_ratio. Only one
0736 of them may be specified at a time. Setting one disables the other (which
0737 then appears as 0 when read).
0738
0739
0740 overcommit_memory
0741 =================
0742
0743 This value contains a flag that enables memory overcommitment.
0744
0745 When this flag is 0, the kernel attempts to estimate the amount
0746 of free memory left when userspace requests more memory.
0747
0748 When this flag is 1, the kernel pretends there is always enough
0749 memory until it actually runs out.
0750
0751 When this flag is 2, the kernel uses a "never overcommit"
0752 policy that attempts to prevent any overcommit of memory.
0753 Note that user_reserve_kbytes affects this policy.
0754
0755 This feature can be very useful because there are a lot of
0756 programs that malloc() huge amounts of memory "just-in-case"
0757 and don't use much of it.
0758
0759 The default value is 0.
0760
0761 See Documentation/mm/overcommit-accounting.rst and
0762 mm/util.c::__vm_enough_memory() for more information.
0763
0764
0765 overcommit_ratio
0766 ================
0767
0768 When overcommit_memory is set to 2, the committed address
0769 space is not permitted to exceed swap plus this percentage
0770 of physical RAM. See above.
0771
0772
0773 page-cluster
0774 ============
0775
0776 page-cluster controls the number of pages up to which consecutive pages
0777 are read in from swap in a single attempt. This is the swap counterpart
0778 to page cache readahead.
0779 The mentioned consecutivity is not in terms of virtual/physical addresses,
0780 but consecutive on swap space - that means they were swapped out together.
0781
0782 It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
0783 it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
0784 Zero disables swap readahead completely.
0785
0786 The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some
0787 small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
0788 swap-intensive.
0789
0790 Lower values mean lower latencies for initial faults, but at the same time
0791 extra faults and I/O delays for following faults if they would have been part of
0792 that consecutive pages readahead would have brought in.
0793
0794
0795 page_lock_unfairness
0796 ====================
0797
0798 This value determines the number of times that the page lock can be
0799 stolen from under a waiter. After the lock is stolen the number of times
0800 specified in this file (default is 5), the "fair lock handoff" semantics
0801 will apply, and the waiter will only be awakened if the lock can be taken.
0802
0803 panic_on_oom
0804 ============
0805
0806 This enables or disables panic on out-of-memory feature.
0807
0808 If this is set to 0, the kernel will kill some rogue process,
0809 called oom_killer. Usually, oom_killer can kill rogue processes and
0810 system will survive.
0811
0812 If this is set to 1, the kernel panics when out-of-memory happens.
0813 However, if a process limits using nodes by mempolicy/cpusets,
0814 and those nodes become memory exhaustion status, one process
0815 may be killed by oom-killer. No panic occurs in this case.
0816 Because other nodes' memory may be free. This means system total status
0817 may be not fatal yet.
0818
0819 If this is set to 2, the kernel panics compulsorily even on the
0820 above-mentioned. Even oom happens under memory cgroup, the whole
0821 system panics.
0822
0823 The default value is 0.
0824
0825 1 and 2 are for failover of clustering. Please select either
0826 according to your policy of failover.
0827
0828 panic_on_oom=2+kdump gives you very strong tool to investigate
0829 why oom happens. You can get snapshot.
0830
0831
0832 percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
0833 =============================
0834
0835 This is the fraction of pages in each zone that are can be stored to
0836 per-cpu page lists. It is an upper boundary that is divided depending
0837 on the number of online CPUs. The min value for this is 8 which means
0838 that we do not allow more than 1/8th of pages in each zone to be stored
0839 on per-cpu page lists. This entry only changes the value of hot per-cpu
0840 page lists. A user can specify a number like 100 to allocate 1/100th of
0841 each zone between per-cpu lists.
0842
0843 The batch value of each per-cpu page list remains the same regardless of
0844 the value of the high fraction so allocation latencies are unaffected.
0845
0846 The initial value is zero. Kernel uses this value to set the high pcp->high
0847 mark based on the low watermark for the zone and the number of local
0848 online CPUs. If the user writes '0' to this sysctl, it will revert to
0849 this default behavior.
0850
0851
0852 stat_interval
0853 =============
0854
0855 The time interval between which vm statistics are updated. The default
0856 is 1 second.
0857
0858
0859 stat_refresh
0860 ============
0861
0862 Any read or write (by root only) flushes all the per-cpu vm statistics
0863 into their global totals, for more accurate reports when testing
0864 e.g. cat /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh /proc/meminfo
0865
0866 As a side-effect, it also checks for negative totals (elsewhere reported
0867 as 0) and "fails" with EINVAL if any are found, with a warning in dmesg.
0868 (At time of writing, a few stats are known sometimes to be found negative,
0869 with no ill effects: errors and warnings on these stats are suppressed.)
0870
0871
0872 numa_stat
0873 =========
0874
0875 This interface allows runtime configuration of numa statistics.
0876
0877 When page allocation performance becomes a bottleneck and you can tolerate
0878 some possible tool breakage and decreased numa counter precision, you can
0879 do::
0880
0881 echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/numa_stat
0882
0883 When page allocation performance is not a bottleneck and you want all
0884 tooling to work, you can do::
0885
0886 echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/numa_stat
0887
0888
0889 swappiness
0890 ==========
0891
0892 This control is used to define the rough relative IO cost of swapping
0893 and filesystem paging, as a value between 0 and 200. At 100, the VM
0894 assumes equal IO cost and will thus apply memory pressure to the page
0895 cache and swap-backed pages equally; lower values signify more
0896 expensive swap IO, higher values indicates cheaper.
0897
0898 Keep in mind that filesystem IO patterns under memory pressure tend to
0899 be more efficient than swap's random IO. An optimal value will require
0900 experimentation and will also be workload-dependent.
0901
0902 The default value is 60.
0903
0904 For in-memory swap, like zram or zswap, as well as hybrid setups that
0905 have swap on faster devices than the filesystem, values beyond 100 can
0906 be considered. For example, if the random IO against the swap device
0907 is on average 2x faster than IO from the filesystem, swappiness should
0908 be 133 (x + 2x = 200, 2x = 133.33).
0909
0910 At 0, the kernel will not initiate swap until the amount of free and
0911 file-backed pages is less than the high watermark in a zone.
0912
0913
0914 unprivileged_userfaultfd
0915 ========================
0916
0917 This flag controls the mode in which unprivileged users can use the
0918 userfaultfd system calls. Set this to 0 to restrict unprivileged users
0919 to handle page faults in user mode only. In this case, users without
0920 SYS_CAP_PTRACE must pass UFFD_USER_MODE_ONLY in order for userfaultfd to
0921 succeed. Prohibiting use of userfaultfd for handling faults from kernel
0922 mode may make certain vulnerabilities more difficult to exploit.
0923
0924 Set this to 1 to allow unprivileged users to use the userfaultfd system
0925 calls without any restrictions.
0926
0927 The default value is 0.
0928
0929
0930 user_reserve_kbytes
0931 ===================
0932
0933 When overcommit_memory is set to 2, "never overcommit" mode, reserve
0934 min(3% of current process size, user_reserve_kbytes) of free memory.
0935 This is intended to prevent a user from starting a single memory hogging
0936 process, such that they cannot recover (kill the hog).
0937
0938 user_reserve_kbytes defaults to min(3% of the current process size, 128MB).
0939
0940 If this is reduced to zero, then the user will be allowed to allocate
0941 all free memory with a single process, minus admin_reserve_kbytes.
0942 Any subsequent attempts to execute a command will result in
0943 "fork: Cannot allocate memory".
0944
0945 Changing this takes effect whenever an application requests memory.
0946
0947
0948 vfs_cache_pressure
0949 ==================
0950
0951 This percentage value controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim
0952 the memory which is used for caching of directory and inode objects.
0953
0954 At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to
0955 reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and
0956 swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer
0957 to retain dentry and inode caches. When vfs_cache_pressure=0, the kernel will
0958 never reclaim dentries and inodes due to memory pressure and this can easily
0959 lead to out-of-memory conditions. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100
0960 causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes.
0961
0962 Increasing vfs_cache_pressure significantly beyond 100 may have negative
0963 performance impact. Reclaim code needs to take various locks to find freeable
0964 directory and inode objects. With vfs_cache_pressure=1000, it will look for
0965 ten times more freeable objects than there are.
0966
0967
0968 watermark_boost_factor
0969 ======================
0970
0971 This factor controls the level of reclaim when memory is being fragmented.
0972 It defines the percentage of the high watermark of a zone that will be
0973 reclaimed if pages of different mobility are being mixed within pageblocks.
0974 The intent is that compaction has less work to do in the future and to
0975 increase the success rate of future high-order allocations such as SLUB
0976 allocations, THP and hugetlbfs pages.
0977
0978 To make it sensible with respect to the watermark_scale_factor
0979 parameter, the unit is in fractions of 10,000. The default value of
0980 15,000 means that up to 150% of the high watermark will be reclaimed in the
0981 event of a pageblock being mixed due to fragmentation. The level of reclaim
0982 is determined by the number of fragmentation events that occurred in the
0983 recent past. If this value is smaller than a pageblock then a pageblocks
0984 worth of pages will be reclaimed (e.g. 2MB on 64-bit x86). A boost factor
0985 of 0 will disable the feature.
0986
0987
0988 watermark_scale_factor
0989 ======================
0990
0991 This factor controls the aggressiveness of kswapd. It defines the
0992 amount of memory left in a node/system before kswapd is woken up and
0993 how much memory needs to be free before kswapd goes back to sleep.
0994
0995 The unit is in fractions of 10,000. The default value of 10 means the
0996 distances between watermarks are 0.1% of the available memory in the
0997 node/system. The maximum value is 3000, or 30% of memory.
0998
0999 A high rate of threads entering direct reclaim (allocstall) or kswapd
1000 going to sleep prematurely (kswapd_low_wmark_hit_quickly) can indicate
1001 that the number of free pages kswapd maintains for latency reasons is
1002 too small for the allocation bursts occurring in the system. This knob
1003 can then be used to tune kswapd aggressiveness accordingly.
1004
1005
1006 zone_reclaim_mode
1007 =================
1008
1009 Zone_reclaim_mode allows someone to set more or less aggressive approaches to
1010 reclaim memory when a zone runs out of memory. If it is set to zero then no
1011 zone reclaim occurs. Allocations will be satisfied from other zones / nodes
1012 in the system.
1013
1014 This is value OR'ed together of
1015
1016 = ===================================
1017 1 Zone reclaim on
1018 2 Zone reclaim writes dirty pages out
1019 4 Zone reclaim swaps pages
1020 = ===================================
1021
1022 zone_reclaim_mode is disabled by default. For file servers or workloads
1023 that benefit from having their data cached, zone_reclaim_mode should be
1024 left disabled as the caching effect is likely to be more important than
1025 data locality.
1026
1027 Consider enabling one or more zone_reclaim mode bits if it's known that the
1028 workload is partitioned such that each partition fits within a NUMA node
1029 and that accessing remote memory would cause a measurable performance
1030 reduction. The page allocator will take additional actions before
1031 allocating off node pages.
1032
1033 Allowing zone reclaim to write out pages stops processes that are
1034 writing large amounts of data from dirtying pages on other nodes. Zone
1035 reclaim will write out dirty pages if a zone fills up and so effectively
1036 throttle the process. This may decrease the performance of a single process
1037 since it cannot use all of system memory to buffer the outgoing writes
1038 anymore but it preserve the memory on other nodes so that the performance
1039 of other processes running on other nodes will not be affected.
1040
1041 Allowing regular swap effectively restricts allocations to the local
1042 node unless explicitly overridden by memory policies or cpuset
1043 configurations.