drop_caches: add some documentation and info message
authorDave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Thu, 3 Apr 2014 21:48:19 +0000 (14:48 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Thu, 3 Apr 2014 23:21:04 +0000 (16:21 -0700)
commit5509a5d27b971a90b940e148ca9ca53312e4fa7a
treea05845240563a79deafc3350e6409c6b3058e0f2
parent67f9fd91f93c582b7de2ab9325b6e179db77e4d5
drop_caches: add some documentation and info message

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and a load of blog posts
suggesting that using "drop_caches" periodically keeps your system
running in "tip top shape".  Perhaps adding some kernel documentation
will increase the amount of accurate data on its use.

If we are not shrinking caches effectively, then we have real bugs.
Using drop_caches will simply mask the bugs and make them harder to
find, but certainly does not fix them, nor is it an appropriate
"workaround" to limit the size of the caches.  On the contrary, there
have been bug reports on issues that turned out to be misguided use of
cache dropping.

Dropping caches is a very drastic and disruptive operation that is good
for debugging and running tests, but if it creates bug reports from
production use, kernel developers should be aware of its use.

Add a bit more documentation about it, a syslog message to track down
abusers, and vmstat drop counters to help analyze problem reports.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: checkpatch fixes]
[hannes@cmpxchg.org: add runtime suppression control]
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Acked-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
fs/drop_caches.c
include/linux/vm_event_item.h
kernel/sysctl.c
mm/vmstat.c