mm/vmscan: protect the workingset on anonymous LRU

In current implementation, newly created or swap-in anonymous page is
started on active list.  Growing active list results in rebalancing
active/inactive list so old pages on active list are demoted to inactive
list.  Hence, the page on active list isn't protected at all.

Following is an example of this situation.

Assume that 50 hot pages on active list.  Numbers denote the number of
pages on active/inactive list (active | inactive).

1. 50 hot pages on active list
50(h) | 0

2. workload: 50 newly created (used-once) pages
50(uo) | 50(h)

3. workload: another 50 newly created (used-once) pages
50(uo) | 50(uo), swap-out 50(h)

This patch tries to fix this issue.  Like as file LRU, newly created or
swap-in anonymous pages will be inserted to the inactive list.  They are
promoted to active list if enough reference happens.  This simple
modification changes the above example as following.

1. 50 hot pages on active list
50(h) | 0

2. workload: 50 newly created (used-once) pages
50(h) | 50(uo)

3. workload: another 50 newly created (used-once) pages
50(h) | 50(uo), swap-out 50(uo)

As you can see, hot pages on active list would be protected.

Note that, this implementation has a drawback that the page cannot be
promoted and will be swapped-out if re-access interval is greater than the
size of inactive list but less than the size of total(active+inactive).
To solve this potential issue, following patch will apply workingset
detection similar to the one that's already applied to file LRU.

Signed-off-by: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1595490560-15117-3-git-send-email-iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/mm/vmscan.c b/mm/vmscan.c
index e34fc04b7045..783cd7fdc61a 100644
--- a/mm/vmscan.c
+++ b/mm/vmscan.c
@@ -998,8 +998,6 @@ static enum page_references page_check_references(struct page *page,
 		return PAGEREF_RECLAIM;
 
 	if (referenced_ptes) {
-		if (PageSwapBacked(page))
-			return PAGEREF_ACTIVATE;
 		/*
 		 * All mapped pages start out with page table
 		 * references from the instantiating fault, so we need
@@ -1022,7 +1020,7 @@ static enum page_references page_check_references(struct page *page,
 		/*
 		 * Activate file-backed executable pages after first usage.
 		 */
-		if (vm_flags & VM_EXEC)
+		if ((vm_flags & VM_EXEC) && !PageSwapBacked(page))
 			return PAGEREF_ACTIVATE;
 
 		return PAGEREF_KEEP;