[PATCH] slab memory shrinking balancing fix

The logic in shrink_slab tries to balance the proportion of slab which it
scans against the proportion of pagecache which the caller scanned.  Problem
is that with a large number of highmem LRU pages and a small number of lowmem
LRU pages, the amount of pagecache scanning appears to be very small, so we
don't push slab hard enough.

The patch changes things so that for, say, a GFP_KERNEL allocation attempt we
only consider ZONE_NORMAL and ZONE_DMA when calculating "what proportion of
the LRU did the caller just scan".

This will have the effect of shrinking slab harder in response to GFP_KERNEL
allocations than for GFP_HIGHMEM allocations.

Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

2 files changed, 23 insertions, 20 deletions

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index bfffe0659d6658..ea75a79010fb3b 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -825,17 +825,6 @@ unsigned int nr_free_pages(void)
 
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(nr_free_pages);
 
-unsigned int nr_used_zone_pages(void)
-{
-	unsigned int pages = 0;
-	struct zone *zone;
-
-	for_each_zone(zone)
-		pages += zone->nr_active + zone->nr_inactive;
-
-	return pages;
-}
-
 #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
 unsigned int nr_free_pages_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat)
 {
diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index f142f2f188f6db..9aedd8e48c8812 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -169,22 +169,25 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(remove_shrinker);
  * slab to avoid swapping.
  *
  * We do weird things to avoid (scanned*seeks*entries) overflowing 32 bits.
+ *
+ * `lru_pages' represents the number of on-LRU pages in all the zones which
+ * are eligible for the caller's allocation attempt.  It is used for balancing
+ * slab reclaim versus page reclaim.
  */
-static int shrink_slab(unsigned long scanned, unsigned int gfp_mask)
+static int shrink_slab(unsigned long scanned, unsigned int gfp_mask,
+			unsigned long lru_pages)
 {
 	struct shrinker *shrinker;
-	long pages;
 
 	if (down_trylock(&shrinker_sem))
 		return 0;
 
-	pages = nr_used_zone_pages();
 	list_for_each_entry(shrinker, &shrinker_list, list) {
 		unsigned long long delta;
 
 		delta = (4 * scanned) / shrinker->seeks;
 		delta *= (*shrinker->shrinker)(0, gfp_mask);
-		do_div(delta, pages + 1);
+		do_div(delta, lru_pages + 1);
 		shrinker->nr += delta;
 		if (shrinker->nr < 0)
 			shrinker->nr = LONG_MAX;	/* It wrapped! */
@@ -896,6 +899,7 @@ int try_to_free_pages(struct zone **zones,
 	int total_scanned = 0, total_reclaimed = 0;
 	struct reclaim_state *reclaim_state = current->reclaim_state;
 	struct scan_control sc;
+	unsigned long lru_pages = 0;
 	int i;
 
 	sc.gfp_mask = gfp_mask;
@@ -903,8 +907,12 @@ int try_to_free_pages(struct zone **zones,
 
 	inc_page_state(allocstall);
 
-	for (i = 0; zones[i] != 0; i++)
-		zones[i]->temp_priority = DEF_PRIORITY;
+	for (i = 0; zones[i] != NULL; i++) {
+		struct zone *zone = zones[i];
+
+		zone->temp_priority = DEF_PRIORITY;
+		lru_pages += zone->nr_active + zone->nr_inactive;
+	}
 
 	for (priority = DEF_PRIORITY; priority >= 0; priority--) {
 		sc.nr_mapped = read_page_state(nr_mapped);
@@ -912,7 +920,7 @@ int try_to_free_pages(struct zone **zones,
 		sc.nr_reclaimed = 0;
 		sc.priority = priority;
 		shrink_caches(zones, &sc);
-		shrink_slab(sc.nr_scanned, gfp_mask);
+		shrink_slab(sc.nr_scanned, gfp_mask, lru_pages);
 		if (reclaim_state) {
 			sc.nr_reclaimed += reclaim_state->reclaimed_slab;
 			reclaim_state->reclaimed_slab = 0;
@@ -997,7 +1005,7 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int nr_pages)
 	for (priority = DEF_PRIORITY; priority >= 0; priority--) {
 		int all_zones_ok = 1;
 		int end_zone = 0;	/* Inclusive.  0 = ZONE_DMA */
-
+		unsigned long lru_pages = 0;
 
 		if (nr_pages == 0) {
 			/*
@@ -1021,6 +1029,12 @@ static int balance_pgdat(pg_data_t *pgdat, int nr_pages)
 			end_zone = pgdat->nr_zones - 1;
 		}
 scan:
+		for (i = 0; i <= end_zone; i++) {
+			struct zone *zone = pgdat->node_zones + i;
+
+			lru_pages += zone->nr_active + zone->nr_inactive;
+		}
+
 		/*
 		 * Now scan the zone in the dma->highmem direction, stopping
 		 * at the last zone which needs scanning.
@@ -1048,7 +1062,7 @@ scan:
 			sc.priority = priority;
 			shrink_zone(zone, &sc);
 			reclaim_state->reclaimed_slab = 0;
-			shrink_slab(sc.nr_scanned, GFP_KERNEL);
+			shrink_slab(sc.nr_scanned, GFP_KERNEL, lru_pages);
 			sc.nr_reclaimed += reclaim_state->reclaimed_slab;
 			total_reclaimed += sc.nr_reclaimed;
 			if (zone->all_unreclaimable)