contributions or ideas from Stephen McKay <syssgm@devetir.qld.gov.au>,
Alan Cox <alc@cs.rice.edu>, David Greenman <davidg@freebsd.org> and me:
More usage of the TAILQ macros. Additional minor fix to queue.h.
Performance enhancements to the pageout daemon.
Addition of a wait in the case that the pageout daemon
has to run immediately.
Slightly modify the pageout algorithm.
Significant revamp of the pmap/fork code:
1) PTE's and UPAGES's are NO LONGER in the process's map.
2) PTE's and UPAGES's reside in their own objects.
3) TOTAL elimination of recursive page table pagefaults.
4) The page directory now resides in the PTE object.
5) Implemented pmap_copy, thereby speeding up fork time.
6) Changed the pv entries so that the head is a pointer
and not an entire entry.
7) Significant cleanup of pmap_protect, and pmap_remove.
8) Removed significant amounts of machine dependent
fork code from vm_glue. Pushed much of that code into
the machine dependent pmap module.
9) Support more completely the reuse of already zeroed
pages (Page table pages and page directories) as being
already zeroed.
Performance and code cleanups in vm_map:
1) Improved and simplified allocation of map entries.
2) Improved vm_map_copy code.
3) Corrected some minor problems in the simplify code.
Implemented splvm (combo of splbio and splimp.) The VM code now
seldom uses splhigh.
Improved the speed of and simplified kmem_malloc.
Minor mod to vm_fault to avoid using pre-zeroed pages in the case
of objects with backing objects along with the already
existant condition of having a vnode. (If there is a backing
object, there will likely be a COW... With a COW, it isn't
necessary to start with a pre-zeroed page.)
Minor reorg of source to perhaps improve locality of ref.
Move a lot of variables home to their own code (In good time before xmas :-)
Introduce the string descrition of format.
Add a couple more functions to poke into these marvels, while I try to
decide what the correct interface should look like.
Next is adding vars on the fly, and sysctl looking at them too.
Removed a tine bit of defunct and #ifdefed notused code in swapgeneric.
proc or any VM system structure will have to be rebuilt!!!
Much needed overhaul of the VM system. Included in this first round of
changes:
1) Improved pager interfaces: init, alloc, dealloc, getpages, putpages,
haspage, and sync operations are supported. The haspage interface now
provides information about clusterability. All pager routines now take
struct vm_object's instead of "pagers".
2) Improved data structures. In the previous paradigm, there is constant
confusion caused by pagers being both a data structure ("allocate a
pager") and a collection of routines. The idea of a pager structure has
escentially been eliminated. Objects now have types, and this type is
used to index the appropriate pager. In most cases, items in the pager
structure were duplicated in the object data structure and thus were
unnecessary. In the few cases that remained, a un_pager structure union
was created in the object to contain these items.
3) Because of the cleanup of #1 & #2, a lot of unnecessary layering can now
be removed. For instance, vm_object_enter(), vm_object_lookup(),
vm_object_remove(), and the associated object hash list were some of the
things that were removed.
4) simple_lock's removed. Discussion with several people reveals that the
SMP locking primitives used in the VM system aren't likely the mechanism
that we'll be adopting. Even if it were, the locking that was in the code
was very inadequate and would have to be mostly re-done anyway. The
locking in a uni-processor kernel was a no-op but went a long way toward
making the code difficult to read and debug.
5) Places that attempted to kludge-up the fact that we don't have kernel
thread support have been fixed to reflect the reality that we are really
dealing with processes, not threads. The VM system didn't have complete
thread support, so the comments and mis-named routines were just wrong.
We now use tsleep and wakeup directly in the lock routines, for instance.
6) Where appropriate, the pagers have been improved, especially in the
pager_alloc routines. Most of the pager_allocs have been rewritten and
are now faster and easier to maintain.
7) The pagedaemon pageout clustering algorithm has been rewritten and
now tries harder to output an even number of pages before and after
the requested page. This is sort of the reverse of the ideal pagein
algorithm and should provide better overall performance.
8) Unnecessary (incorrect) casts to caddr_t in calls to tsleep & wakeup
have been removed. Some other unnecessary casts have also been removed.
9) Some almost useless debugging code removed.
10) Terminology of shadow objects vs. backing objects straightened out.
The fact that the vm_object data structure escentially had this
backwards really confused things. The use of "shadow" and "backing
object" throughout the code is now internally consistent and correct
in the Mach terminology.
11) Several minor bug fixes, including one in the vm daemon that caused
0 RSS objects to not get purged as intended.
12) A "default pager" has now been created which cleans up the transition
of objects to the "swap" type. The previous checks throughout the code
for swp->pg_data != NULL were really ugly. This change also provides
the rudiments for future backing of "anonymous" memory by something
other than the swap pager (via the vnode pager, for example), and it
allows the decision about which of these pagers to use to be made
dynamically (although will need some additional decision code to do
this, of course).
13) (dyson) MAP_COPY has been deprecated and the corresponding "copy
object" code has been removed. MAP_COPY was undocumented and non-
standard. It was furthermore broken in several ways which caused its
behavior to degrade to MAP_PRIVATE. Binaries that use MAP_COPY will
continue to work correctly, but via the slightly different semantics
of MAP_PRIVATE.
14) (dyson) Sharing maps have been removed. It's marginal usefulness in a
threads design can be worked around in other ways. Both #12 and #13
were done to simplify the code and improve readability and maintain-
ability. (As were most all of these changes)
TODO:
1) Rewrite most of the vnode pager to use VOP_GETPAGES/PUTPAGES. Doing
this will reduce the vnode pager to a mere fraction of its current size.
2) Rewrite vm_fault and the swap/vnode pagers to use the clustering
information provided by the new haspage pager interface. This will
substantially reduce the overhead by eliminating a large number of
VOP_BMAP() calls. The VOP_BMAP() filesystem interface should be
improved to provide both a "behind" and "ahead" indication of
contiguousness.
3) Implement the extended features of pager_haspage in swap_pager_haspage().
It currently just says 0 pages ahead/behind.
4) Re-implement the swap device (swstrategy) in a more elegant way, perhaps
via a much more general mechanism that could also be used for disk
striping of regular filesystems.
5) Do something to improve the architecture of vm_object_collapse(). The
fact that it makes calls into the swap pager and knows too much about
how the swap pager operates really bothers me. It also doesn't allow
for collapsing of non-swap pager objects ("unnamed" objects backed by
other pagers).
much higher filesystem I/O performance, and much better paging performance. It
represents the culmination of over 6 months of R&D.
The majority of the merged VM/cache work is by John Dyson.
The following highlights the most significant changes. Additionally, there are
(mostly minor) changes to the various filesystem modules (nfs, msdosfs, etc) to
support the new VM/buffer scheme.
vfs_bio.c:
Significant rewrite of most of vfs_bio to support the merged VM buffer cache
scheme. The scheme is almost fully compatible with the old filesystem
interface. Significant improvement in the number of opportunities for write
clustering.
vfs_cluster.c, vfs_subr.c
Upgrade and performance enhancements in vfs layer code to support merged
VM/buffer cache. Fixup of vfs_cluster to eliminate the bogus pagemove stuff.
vm_object.c:
Yet more improvements in the collapse code. Elimination of some windows that
can cause list corruption.
vm_pageout.c:
Fixed it, it really works better now. Somehow in 2.0, some "enhancements"
broke the code. This code has been reworked from the ground-up.
vm_fault.c, vm_page.c, pmap.c, vm_object.c
Support for small-block filesystems with merged VM/buffer cache scheme.
pmap.c vm_map.c
Dynamic kernel VM size, now we dont have to pre-allocate excessive numbers of
kernel PTs.
vm_glue.c
Much simpler and more effective swapping code. No more gratuitous swapping.
proc.h
Fixed the problem that the p_lock flag was not being cleared on a fork.
swap_pager.c, vnode_pager.c
Removal of old vfs_bio cruft to support the past pseudo-coherency. Now the
code doesn't need it anymore.
machdep.c
Changes to better support the parameter values for the merged VM/buffer cache
scheme.
machdep.c, kern_exec.c, vm_glue.c
Implemented a seperate submap for temporary exec string space and another one
to contain process upages. This eliminates all map fragmentation problems
that previously existed.
ffs_inode.c, ufs_inode.c, ufs_readwrite.c
Changes for merged VM/buffer cache. Add "bypass" support for sneaking in on
busy buffers.
Submitted by: John Dyson and David Greenman
