aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation/sysctl
AgeCommit message (Collapse)Author
2010-03-12memcg: handle panic_on_oom=always caseKAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
Presently, if panic_on_oom=2, the whole system panics even if the oom happend in some special situation (as cpuset, mempolicy....). Then, panic_on_oom=2 means painc_on_oom_always. Now, memcg doesn't check panic_on_oom flag. This patch adds a check. BTW, how it's useful ? kdump+panic_on_oom=2 is the last tool to investigate what happens in oom-ed system. When a task is killed, the sysytem recovers and there will be few hint to know what happnes. In mission critical system, oom should never happen. Then, panic_on_oom=2+kdump is useful to avoid next OOM by knowing precise information via snapshot. TODO: - For memcg, it's for isolate system's memory usage, oom-notiifer and freeze_at_oom (or rest_at_oom) should be implemented. Then, management daemon can do similar jobs (as kdump) or taking snapshot per cgroup. Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> Reviewed-by: Daisuke Nishimura <nishimura@mxp.nes.nec.co.jp> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-12-11doc: Add documentation for bootloader_{type,version}H. Peter Anvin
Add documentation for kernel/bootloader_type and kernel/bootloader_version to sysctl/kernel.txt. This should really have been done a long time ago. Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> Cc: Shen Feng <shen@cn.fujitsu.com>
2009-12-09Merge branch 'for-linus' of ↵Linus Torvalds
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial * 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial: (42 commits) tree-wide: fix misspelling of "definition" in comments reiserfs: fix misspelling of "journaled" doc: Fix a typo in slub.txt. inotify: remove superfluous return code check hdlc: spelling fix in find_pvc() comment doc: fix regulator docs cut-and-pasteism mtd: Fix comment in Kconfig doc: Fix IRQ chip docs tree-wide: fix assorted typos all over the place drivers/ata/libata-sff.c: comment spelling fixes fix typos/grammos in Documentation/edac.txt sysctl: add missing comments fs/debugfs/inode.c: fix comment typos sgivwfb: Make use of ARRAY_SIZE. sky2: fix sky2_link_down copy/paste comment error tree-wide: fix typos "couter" -> "counter" tree-wide: fix typos "offest" -> "offset" fix kerneldoc for set_irq_msi() spidev: fix double "of of" in comment comment typo fix: sybsystem -> subsystem ...
2009-12-04tree-wide: fix assorted typos all over the placeAndré Goddard Rosa
That is "success", "unknown", "through", "performance", "[re|un]mapping" , "access", "default", "reasonable", "[con]currently", "temperature" , "channel", "[un]used", "application", "example","hierarchy", "therefore" , "[over|under]flow", "contiguous", "threshold", "enough" and others. Signed-off-by: André Goddard Rosa <andre.goddard@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-11-18sysctl: Remove CTL_NONE and CTL_UNNUMBEREDEric W. Biederman
Now that the sysctl structures no longer have a ctl_name field there is no reason to retain the definitions for CTL_NONE and CTL_UNNUMBERED, or to explain their historic usage. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
2009-11-09docs: fix core_pipe_limit infoRandy Dunlap
Fix typos in core_pipe_limit info. Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> Cc: Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-09-24Merge branch 'hwpoison' of ↵Linus Torvalds
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ak/linux-mce-2.6 * 'hwpoison' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ak/linux-mce-2.6: (21 commits) HWPOISON: Enable error_remove_page on btrfs HWPOISON: Add simple debugfs interface to inject hwpoison on arbitary PFNs HWPOISON: Add madvise() based injector for hardware poisoned pages v4 HWPOISON: Enable error_remove_page for NFS HWPOISON: Enable .remove_error_page for migration aware file systems HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7 HWPOISON: Add PR_MCE_KILL prctl to control early kill behaviour per process HWPOISON: shmem: call set_page_dirty() with locked page HWPOISON: Define a new error_remove_page address space op for async truncation HWPOISON: Add invalidate_inode_page HWPOISON: Refactor truncate to allow direct truncating of page v2 HWPOISON: check and isolate corrupted free pages v2 HWPOISON: Handle hardware poisoned pages in try_to_unmap HWPOISON: Use bitmask/action code for try_to_unmap behaviour HWPOISON: x86: Add VM_FAULT_HWPOISON handling to x86 page fault handler v2 HWPOISON: Add poison check to page fault handling HWPOISON: Add basic support for poisoned pages in fault handler v3 HWPOISON: Add new SIGBUS error codes for hardware poison signals HWPOISON: Add support for poison swap entries v2 HWPOISON: Export some rmap vma locking to outside world ...
2009-09-24exec: let do_coredump() limit the number of concurrent dumps to pipesNeil Horman
Introduce core pipe limiting sysctl. Since we can dump cores to pipe, rather than directly to the filesystem, we create a condition in which a user can create a very high load on the system simply by running bad applications. If the pipe reader specified in core_pattern is poorly written, we can have lots of ourstandig resources and processes in the system. This sysctl introduces an ability to limit that resource consumption. core_pipe_limit defines how many in-flight dumps may be run in parallel, dumps beyond this value are skipped and a note is made in the kernel log. A special value of 0 in core_pipe_limit denotes unlimited core dumps may be handled (this is the default value). [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] Signed-off-by: Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com> Reported-by: Earl Chew <earl_chew@agilent.com> Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru> Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-24Documentation: update stale definition of file-nr in fs.txtXiaotian Feng
In "documentation: update Documentation/filesystem/proc.txt and Documentation/sysctls" (commit 760df93ec) we merged /proc/sys/fs documentation in Documentation/sysctl/fs.txt and Documentation/filesystem/proc.txt, but stale file-nr definition remained. This patch adds back the right fs-nr definition for 2.6 kernel. Signed-off-by: Xiaotian Feng<dfeng@redhat.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-23printk: add printk_delay to make messages readable for some scenariosDave Young
When syslog is not possible, at the same time there's no serial/net console available, it will be hard to read the printk messages. For example oops/panic/warning messages in shutdown phase. Add a printk delay feature, we can make each printk message delay some milliseconds. Setting the delay by proc/sysctl interface: /proc/sys/kernel/printk_delay The value range from 0 - 10000, default value is 0 [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix a few things] Signed-off-by: Dave Young <hidave.darkstar@gmail.com> Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-22Merge branch 'for-linus' of ↵Linus Torvalds
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial * 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial: (34 commits) trivial: fix typo in aic7xxx comment trivial: fix comment typo in drivers/ata/pata_hpt37x.c trivial: typo in kernel-parameters.txt trivial: fix typo in tracing documentation trivial: add __init/__exit macros in drivers/gpio/bt8xxgpio.c trivial: add __init macro/ fix of __exit macro location in ipmi_poweroff.c trivial: remove unnecessary semicolons trivial: Fix duplicated word "options" in comment trivial: kbuild: remove extraneous blank line after declaration of usage() trivial: improve help text for mm debug config options trivial: doc: hpfall: accept disk device to unload as argument trivial: doc: hpfall: reduce risk that hpfall can do harm trivial: SubmittingPatches: Fix reference to renumbered step trivial: fix typos "man[ae]g?ment" -> "management" trivial: media/video/cx88: add __init/__exit macros to cx88 drivers trivial: fix typo in CONFIG_DEBUG_FS in gcov doc trivial: fix missing printk space in amd_k7_smp_check trivial: fix typo s/ketymap/keymap/ in comment trivial: fix typo "to to" in multiple files trivial: fix typos in comments s/DGBU/DBGU/ ...
2009-09-22vm: document that setting vfs_cache_pressure to 0 isn't a good ideaJan Kara
Reported-by: Christian Thaeter <ct@pipapo.org> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-09-21trivial: doc: document missing value 2 for randomize-va-spaceHorst Schirmeier
The documentation for /proc/sys/kernel/* does not mention the possible value 2 for randomize-va-space yet. While being there, doing some reformatting, fixing grammar problems and clarifying the correlations between randomize-va-space, kernel parameter "norandmaps" and the CONFIG_COMPAT_BRK option. Signed-off-by: Horst Schirmeier <horst@schirmeier.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-09-16HWPOISON: The high level memory error handler in the VM v7Andi Kleen
Add the high level memory handler that poisons pages that got corrupted by hardware (typically by a two bit flip in a DIMM or a cache) on the Linux level. The goal is to prevent everyone from accessing these pages in the future. This done at the VM level by marking a page hwpoisoned and doing the appropriate action based on the type of page it is. The code that does this is portable and lives in mm/memory-failure.c To quote the overview comment: High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache failure. This focuses on pages detected as corrupted in the background. When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead when that happens another machine check will happen. Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere, possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the error handling takes potentially a long time. Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected to be rare we hope we can get away with this. There are in principle two strategies to kill processes on poison: - just unmap the data and wait for an actual reference before killing - kill as soon as corruption is detected. Both have advantages and disadvantages and should be used in different situations. Right now both are implemented and can be switched with a new sysctl vm.memory_failure_early_kill The default is early kill. The patch does some rmap data structure walking on its own to collect processes to kill. This is unusual because normally all rmap data structure knowledge is in rmap.c only. I put it here for now to keep everything together and rmap knowledge has been seeping out anyways Includes contributions from Johannes Weiner, Chris Mason, Fengguang Wu, Nick Piggin (who did a lot of great work) and others. Cc: npiggin@suse.de Cc: riel@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> Acked-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Hidehiro Kawai <hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com>
2009-09-11[S390] add call home supportHans-Joachim Picht
Signed-off-by: Hans-Joachim Picht <hans@de.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
2009-06-16vmscan: properly account for the number of page cache pages zone_reclaim() ↵Mel Gorman
can reclaim A bug was brought to my attention against a distro kernel but it affects mainline and I believe problems like this have been reported in various guises on the mailing lists although I don't have specific examples at the moment. The reported problem was that malloc() stalled for a long time (minutes in some cases) if a large tmpfs mount was occupying a large percentage of memory overall. The pages did not get cleaned or reclaimed by zone_reclaim() because the zone_reclaim_mode was unsuitable, but the lists are uselessly scanned frequencly making the CPU spin at near 100%. This patchset intends to address that bug and bring the behaviour of zone_reclaim() more in line with expectations which were noticed during investigation. It is based on top of mmotm and takes advantage of Kosaki's work with respect to zone_reclaim(). Patch 1 fixes the heuristics that zone_reclaim() uses to determine if the scan should go ahead. The broken heuristic is what was causing the malloc() stall as it uselessly scanned the LRU constantly. Currently, zone_reclaim is assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 and historically it could not deal with tmpfs pages at all. This fixes up the heuristic so that an unnecessary scan is more likely to be correctly avoided. Patch 2 notes that zone_reclaim() returning a failure automatically means the zone is marked full. This is not always true. It could have failed because the GFP mask or zone_reclaim_mode were unsuitable. Patch 3 introduces a counter zreclaim_failed that will increment each time the zone_reclaim scan-avoidance heuristics fail. If that counter is rapidly increasing, then zone_reclaim_mode should be set to 0 as a temporarily resolution and a bug reported because the scan-avoidance heuristic is still broken. This patch: On NUMA machines, the administrator can configure zone_reclaim_mode that is a more targetted form of direct reclaim. On machines with large NUMA distances for example, a zone_reclaim_mode defaults to 1 meaning that clean unmapped pages will be reclaimed if the zone watermarks are not being met. There is a heuristic that determines if the scan is worthwhile but the problem is that the heuristic is not being properly applied and is basically assuming zone_reclaim_mode is 1 if it is enabled. The lack of proper detection can manfiest as high CPU usage as the LRU list is scanned uselessly. Historically, once enabled it was depending on NR_FILE_PAGES which may include swapcache pages that the reclaim_mode cannot deal with. Patch vmscan-change-the-number-of-the-unmapped-files-in-zone-reclaim.patch by Kosaki Motohiro noted that zone_page_state(zone, NR_FILE_PAGES) included pages that were not file-backed such as swapcache and made a calculation based on the inactive, active and mapped files. This is far superior when zone_reclaim==1 but if RECLAIM_SWAP is set, then NR_FILE_PAGES is a reasonable starting figure. This patch alters how zone_reclaim() works out how many pages it might be able to reclaim given the current reclaim_mode. If RECLAIM_SWAP is set in the reclaim_mode it will either consider NR_FILE_PAGES as potential candidates or else use NR_{IN}ACTIVE}_PAGES-NR_FILE_MAPPED to discount swapcache and other non-file-backed pages. If RECLAIM_WRITE is not set, then NR_FILE_DIRTY number of pages are not candidates. If RECLAIM_SWAP is not set, then NR_FILE_MAPPED are not. [kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com: Estimate unmapped pages minus tmpfs pages] [fengguang.wu@intel.com: Fix underflow problem in Kosaki's estimate] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> Cc: <stable@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-06-16page allocator: use allocation flags as an index to the zone watermarkMel Gorman
ALLOC_WMARK_MIN, ALLOC_WMARK_LOW and ALLOC_WMARK_HIGH determin whether pages_min, pages_low or pages_high is used as the zone watermark when allocating the pages. Two branches in the allocator hotpath determine which watermark to use. This patch uses the flags as an array index into a watermark array that is indexed with WMARK_* defines accessed via helpers. All call sites that use zone->pages_* are updated to use the helpers for accessing the values and the array offsets for setting. Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-06-12trivial: Miscellaneous documentation typo fixesMatt LaPlante
Fix various typos in documentation txts. Signed-off-by: Matt LaPlante <kernel1@cyberdogtech.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-05-22Merge branch 'master' into nextJames Morris
Conflicts: fs/exec.c Removed IMA changes (the IMA checks are now performed via may_open()). Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2009-05-15Revert "mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threads"Jens Axboe
This reverts commit fafd688e4c0c34da0f3de909881117d374e4c7af. Work is progressing to switch away from pdflush as the process backing for flushing out dirty data. So it seems pointless to add more knobs to control pdflush threads. The original author of the patch did not have any specific use cases for adding the knobs, so we can easily revert this before 2.6.30 to avoid having to maintain this API forever. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
2009-05-08Merge branch 'master' into nextJames Morris
2009-05-02mm: prevent divide error for small values of vm_dirty_bytesAndrea Righi
Avoid setting less than two pages for vm_dirty_bytes: this is necessary to avoid potential division by 0 (like the following) in get_dirty_limits(). [ 49.951610] divide error: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP [ 49.952195] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent [ 49.952195] CPU 1 [ 49.952195] Modules linked in: pcspkr [ 49.952195] Pid: 3064, comm: dd Not tainted 2.6.30-rc3 #1 [ 49.952195] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff802d39a9>] [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP: 0018:ffff88001de03a98 EFLAGS: 00010202 [ 49.952195] RAX: 00000000000000c0 RBX: ffff88001de03b80 RCX: 28f5c28f5c28f5c3 [ 49.952195] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000000000c0 RDI: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] RBP: ffff88001de03ae8 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] R10: ffff88001ddda9a0 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 0000000000000001 [ 49.952195] R13: ffff88001fbc8218 R14: ffff88001de03b70 R15: ffff88001de03b78 [ 49.952195] FS: 00007fe9a435b6f0(0000) GS:ffff8800025d9000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 49.952195] CR2: 00007fe9a39ab000 CR3: 000000001de38000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 [ 49.952195] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [ 49.952195] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [ 49.952195] Process dd (pid: 3064, threadinfo ffff88001de02000, task ffff88001ddda250) [ 49.952195] Stack: [ 49.952195] ffff88001fa0de00 ffff88001f2dbd70 ffff88001f9fe800 000080b900000000 [ 49.952195] 00000000000000c0 ffff8800027a6100 0000000000000400 ffff88001fbc8218 [ 49.952195] 0000000000000000 0000000000000600 ffff88001de03bb8 ffffffff802d3ed7 [ 49.952195] Call Trace: [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802d3ed7>] balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_nr+0x1d7/0x3f0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80368f8e>] ? ext3_writeback_write_end+0x9e/0x120 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cc7df>] generic_file_buffered_write+0x12f/0x330 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cce8d>] __generic_file_aio_write_nolock+0x26d/0x460 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cda32>] ? generic_file_aio_write+0x52/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff802cda49>] generic_file_aio_write+0x69/0xd0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80365fa6>] ext3_file_write+0x26/0xc0 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff803034d1>] do_sync_write+0xf1/0x140 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80290d1a>] ? get_lock_stats+0x2a/0x60 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff80280730>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff8030411b>] vfs_write+0xcb/0x190 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff803042d0>] sys_write+0x50/0x90 [ 49.952195] [<ffffffff8022ff6b>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b [ 49.952195] Code: 00 00 00 2b 05 09 1c 17 01 48 89 c6 49 0f af f4 48 c1 ee 02 48 89 f0 48 f7 e1 48 89 d6 31 d2 48 c1 ee 02 48 0f af 75 d0 48 89 f0 <48> f7 f7 41 8b 95 ac 01 00 00 48 89 c7 49 0f af d4 48 c1 ea 02 [ 49.952195] RIP [<ffffffff802d39a9>] get_dirty_limits+0xe9/0x2c0 [ 49.952195] RSP <ffff88001de03a98> [ 50.096523] ---[ end trace 008d7aa02f244d7b ]--- Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-13Documentation/sysctl/net.txt: fix a typoLi Zefan
s/spicified/specified Signed-off-by: Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-07mm: add /proc controls for pdflush threadsPeter W Morreale
Add /proc entries to give the admin the ability to control the minimum and maximum number of pdflush threads. This allows finer control of pdflush on both large and small machines. The rationale is simply one size does not fit all. Admins on large and/or small systems may want to tune the min/max pdflush thread count to best suit their needs. Right now the min/max is hardcoded to 2/8. While probably a fair estimate for smaller machines, large machines with large numbers of CPUs and large numbers of filesystems/block devices may benefit from larger numbers of threads working on different block devices. Even if the background flushing algorithm is radically changed, it is still likely that multiple threads will be involved and admins would still desire finer control on the min/max other than to have to recompile the kernel. The patch adds '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_min' and '/proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads_max' with r/w permissions. The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_min is 1 and the maximum value is the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_max. This minimum is required since additional thread creation is performed in a pdflush thread itself. The minimum value for nr_pdflush_threads_max is the current value of nr_pdflush_threads_min and the maximum value can be 1000. Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt is also updated. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment, fix whitespace, use __read_mostly] Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com> Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-02documentation: fix unix_dgram_qlen descriptionLi Xiaodong
Previous description about system parameter in /proc/sys/net/unix/ is wrong (or missed). Simply add a new description about unix_dgram_qlen according to latest kernel. Signed-off-by: Li Xiaodong <lixd@cn.fujitsu.com> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-02documentation: update Documentation/filesystem/proc.txt and ↵Shen Feng
Documentation/sysctls Now /proc/sys is described in many places and much information is redundant. This patch updates the proc.txt and move the /proc/sys desciption out to the files in Documentation/sysctls. Details are: merge - 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data - 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem - 2.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface with Documentation/sysctls/fs.txt. remove - 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats since it's not better then the Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt. merge - 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters with Documentation/sysctls/kernel.txt remove - 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters since it's obsolete the sysfs is used now. remove - 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls since it's not better then the Documentation/sysctls/sunrpc.txt move - 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff - 2.9 Appletalk - 2.10 IPX to newly created Documentation/sysctls/net.txt. remove - 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings since it's not better then the Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt. add - Chapter 3 Per-Process Parameters to descibe /proc/<pid>/xxx parameters. Signed-off-by: Shen Feng <shen@cn.fujitsu.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-04-03modules: sysctl to block module loadingKees Cook
Implement a sysctl file that disables module-loading system-wide since there is no longer a viable way to remove CAP_SYS_MODULE after the system bounding capability set was removed in 2.6.25. Value can only be set to "1", and is tested only if standard capability checks allow CAP_SYS_MODULE. Given existing /dev/mem protections, this should allow administrators a one-way method to block module loading after initial boot-time module loading has finished. Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com> Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2009-01-15Update of Documentation: vm.txt and proc.txtPeter W Morreale
Update Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt and Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt. More specifically, the section on /proc/sys/vm in Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt was removed and a link to Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt added. Most of the verbiage from proc.txt was simply moved in vm.txt, with new addtional text for "swappiness" and "stat_interval". Signed-off-by: Peter W Morreale <pmorreale@novell.com> Acked-by: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2009-01-08NOMMU: Make mmap allocation page trimming behaviour configurable.Paul Mundt
NOMMU mmap allocates a piece of memory for an mmap that's rounded up in size to the nearest power-of-2 number of pages. Currently it then discards the excess pages back to the page allocator, making that memory available for use by other things. This can, however, cause greater amount of fragmentation. To counter this, a sysctl is added in order to fine-tune the trimming behaviour. The default behaviour remains to trim pages aggressively, while this can either be disabled completely or set to a higher page-granular watermark in order to have finer-grained control. vm region vm_top bits taken from an earlier patch by David Howells. Signed-off-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org> Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> Tested-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi@gmail.com>
2009-01-06mm: add dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes sysctlsDavid Rientjes
This change introduces two new sysctls to /proc/sys/vm: dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes. dirty_background_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_background_ratio and dirty_bytes is the counterpart to dirty_ratio. With growing memory capacities of individual machines, it's no longer sufficient to specify dirty thresholds as a percentage of the amount of dirtyable memory over the entire system. dirty_background_bytes and dirty_bytes specify quantities of memory, in bytes, that represent the dirty limits for the entire system. If either of these values is set, its value represents the amount of dirty memory that is needed to commence either background or direct writeback. When a `bytes' or `ratio' file is written, its counterpart becomes a function of the written value. For example, if dirty_bytes is written to be 8096, 8K of memory is required to commence direct writeback. dirty_ratio is then functionally equivalent to 8K / the amount of dirtyable memory: dirtyable_memory = free pages + mapped pages + file cache dirty_background_bytes = dirty_background_ratio * dirtyable_memory -or- dirty_background_ratio = dirty_background_bytes / dirtyable_memory AND dirty_bytes = dirty_ratio * dirtyable_memory -or- dirty_ratio = dirty_bytes / dirtyable_memory Only one of dirty_background_bytes and dirty_background_ratio may be specified at a time, and only one of dirty_bytes and dirty_ratio may be specified. When one sysctl is written, the other appears as 0 when read. The `bytes' files operate on a page size granularity since dirty limits are compared with ZVC values, which are in page units. Prior to this change, the minimum dirty_ratio was 5 as implemented by get_dirty_limits() although /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio would show any user written value between 0 and 100. This restriction is maintained, but dirty_bytes has a lower limit of only one page. Also prior to this change, the dirty_background_ratio could not equal or exceed dirty_ratio. This restriction is maintained in addition to restricting dirty_background_bytes. If either background threshold equals or exceeds that of the dirty threshold, it is implicitly set to half the dirty threshold. Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Andrea Righi <righi.andrea@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-10-29Document kernel taint flags properlyGreg Kroah-Hartman
This fills in the documentation for all of the current kernel taint flags, and fixes the number for TAINT_CRAP, which was incorrectly described. Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
2008-10-10Staging: add TAINT_CRAP for all drivers/staging codeGreg Kroah-Hartman
We need to add a flag for all code that is in the drivers/staging/ directory to prevent all other kernel developers from worrying about issues here, and to notify users that the drivers might not be as good as they are normally used to. Based on code from Andreas Gruenbacher and Jeff Mahoney to provide a TAINT flag for the support level of a kernel module in the Novell enterprise kernel release. This is the kernel portion of this feature, the ability for the flag to be set needs to be done in the build process and will happen in a follow-up patch. Cc: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de> Cc: Jeff Mahoney <jeffm@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
2008-09-23Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt: fix softlockup_thresh descriptionAndrew Morton
- s/s/seconds/ - s/10 seconds/60 seconds/ - Mention the zero-disables-it feature. Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-07-26Documentation cleanup: trivial misspelling, punctuation, and grammar ↵Matt LaPlante
corrections. Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-13Documentation: sysctl/kernel.txt: fix documentation referenceMichael Opdenacker
This patch fixes a reference to Documentation/kmod.txt which was apparently renamed to Documentation/debugging-modules.txt Signed-off-by: Michael Opdenacker <michael@free-electrons.com> Cc: "Randy.Dunlap" <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-09brk: document randomize_va_space and CONFIG_COMPAT_BRK (was Re:Jiri Kosina
Document randomize_va_space and CONFIG_COMPAT_BRK. Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
2008-02-07oom: add sysctl to enable task memory dumpDavid Rientjes
Adds a new sysctl, 'oom_dump_tasks', that enables the kernel to produce a dump of all system tasks (excluding kernel threads) when performing an OOM-killing. Information includes pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, cpu, oom_adj score, and name. This is helpful for determining why there was an OOM condition and which rogue task caused it. It is configurable so that large systems, such as those with several thousand tasks, do not incur a performance penalty associated with dumping data they may not desire. If an OOM was triggered as a result of a memory controller, the tasklist shall be filtered to exclude tasks that are not a member of the same cgroup. Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-06get rid of NR_OPEN and introduce a sysctl_nr_openEric Dumazet
NR_OPEN (historically set to 1024*1024) actually forbids processes to open more than 1024*1024 handles. Unfortunatly some production servers hit the not so 'ridiculously high value' of 1024*1024 file descriptors per process. Changing NR_OPEN is not considered safe because of vmalloc space potential exhaust. This patch introduces a new sysctl (/proc/sys/fs/nr_open) wich defaults to 1024*1024, so that admins can decide to change this limit if their workload needs it. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: export it for sparc64] Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <dada1@cosmosbay.com> Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Cc: Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net> Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-02-05mm/page-writeback: highmem_is_dirtyable optionBron Gondwana
Add vm.highmem_is_dirtyable toggle A 32 bit machine with HIGHMEM64 enabled running DCC has an MMAPed file of approximately 2Gb size which contains a hash format that is written randomly by the dbclean process. On 2.6.16 this process took a few minutes. With lowmem only accounting of dirty ratios, this takes about 12 hours of 100% disk IO, all random writes. Include a toggle in /proc/sys/vm/highmem_is_dirtyable which can be set to 1 to add the highmem back to the total available memory count. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: Fix the CONFIG_DETECT_SOFTLOCKUP=y build] Signed-off-by: Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm> Cc: Ethan Solomita <solo@google.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Cc: WU Fengguang <wfg@mail.ustc.edu.cn> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-12-17Documentation: update hugetlb informationNishanth Aravamudan
The hugetlb documentation has gotten a bit out of sync with the current code. Updated the sysctl file to refer to Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt. Update that file to contain the current state of affairs (with the newer named sysctl in place). Signed-off-by: Nishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com> Acked-by: Adam Litke <agl@us.ibm.com> Cc: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Cc: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17vm.txt: document min_free_pages as critical for correctnessPavel Machek
min_free_pages is critical for correctness, document it as such. Signed-off-by: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17Add a 00-INDEX file to Documentation/sysctl/Jesper Juhl
Add a 00-INDEX file to Documentation/sysctl/ Signed-off-by: Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com> Cc: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17softlockup: add a /proc tuning parameterRavikiran G Thirumalai
Control the trigger limit for softlockup warnings. This is useful for debugging softlockups, by lowering the softlockup_thresh to identify possible softlockups earlier. This patch: 1. Adds a sysctl softlockup_thresh with valid values of 1-60s (Higher value to disable false positives) 2. Changes the softlockup printk to print the cpu softlockup time [akpm@linux-foundation.org: Fix various warnings and add definition of "two"] Signed-off-by: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@scalex86.org> Signed-off-by: Shai Fultheim <shai@scalex86.org> Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17oom: add oom_kill_allocating_task sysctlDavid Rientjes
Adds a new sysctl, 'oom_kill_allocating_task', which will automatically kill the OOM-triggering task instead of scanning through the tasklist to find a memory-hogging target. This is helpful for systems with an insanely large number of tasks where scanning the tasklist significantly degrades performance. Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de> Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-17handle kernelcore=: genericMel Gorman
This patch adds the kernelcore= parameter for x86. Once all patches are applied, a new command-line parameter exist and a new sysctl. This patch adds the necessary documentation. From: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> When "kernelcore" boot option is specified, kernel can't boot up on ia64 because of an infinite loop. In addition, the parsing code can be handled in an architecture-independent manner. This patch uses common code to handle the kernelcore= parameter. It is only available to architectures that support arch-independent zone-sizing (i.e. define CONFIG_ARCH_POPULATES_NODE_MAP). Other architectures will ignore the boot parameter. [bunk@stusta.de: make cmdline_parse_kernelcore() static] Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Acked-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16Add Documentation/sysctl/ctl_unnumbered.txtAndrew Morton
Poeple keep on adding new numbered sysctls, when they're supposed not to. Add a documentation file which explain why new sysctls should use CTL_UNNUMBERED. The next patch will sprinkle pointers to this throughout sysctl.c. Eric provided the text (thanks) Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logicKAMEZAWA Hiroyuki
Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6. This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable. Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based. [Default Order] The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically. [Node-based Order] This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones (ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist. current 2.6.21 kernel uses this. Pros. * A user can expect local memory as much as possible. Cons. * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL. Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. [Zone-based order] This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter. Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion. IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist. Pros. * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted. Cons. * memory locality may not be best. (example) assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL. *node(0)'s memory allocation order: node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. *node(1)'s memory allocation order: node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA. bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd. command: %echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order. command: %echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order. Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes. [Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-11security: Protection for exploiting null dereference using mmapEric Paris
Add a new security check on mmap operations to see if the user is attempting to mmap to low area of the address space. The amount of space protected is indicated by the new proc tunable /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr and defaults to 0, preserving existing behavior. This patch uses a new SELinux security class "memprotect." Policy already contains a number of allow rules like a_t self:process * (unconfined_t being one of them) which mean that putting this check in the process class (its best current fit) would make it useless as all user processes, which we also want to protect against, would be allowed. By taking the memprotect name of the new class it will also make it possible for us to move some of the other memory protect permissions out of 'process' and into the new class next time we bump the policy version number (which I also think is a good future idea) Acked-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov> Acked-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org> Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2007-05-09misc doc and kconfig typosMatt LaPlante
Fix various typos in kernel docs and Kconfigs, 2.6.21-rc4. Signed-off-by: Matt LaPlante <kernel1@cyberdogtech.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
2007-05-09Fix misspellings collected by members of KJ list.Robert P. J. Day
Fix the misspellings of "propogate", "writting" and (oh, the shame :-) "kenrel" in the source tree. Signed-off-by: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@mindspring.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>