proc/meminfo新增了 MemAvailable(3.14内核)

这个是  3.14内核的一个新的功能。在3.14的内核上，你能看到一个新的内存指标：available memory. 它和 free memory是不一样的：

#cat /proc/meminfo 
MemTotal:        1033332 kB
MemFree:         1022060 kB
MemAvailable:    1018904 kB
Buffers:             200 kB
Cached:             2684 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:             1136 kB
Inactive:           1948 kB
Active(anon):        204 kB
Inactive(anon):        0 kB
Active(file):        932 kB
Inactive(file):     1948 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:             0 kB
SwapFree:              0 kB
Dirty:                 4 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:           220 kB
Mapped:              792 kB
Shmem:                 0 kB
Slab:               3568 kB
SReclaimable:        964 kB
SUnreclaim:         2604 kB
KernelStack:         392 kB
PageTables:           52 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:      516664 kB
Committed_AS:       1124 kB
VmallocTotal:    1024000 kB
VmallocUsed:      133712 kB
VmallocChunk:     753660 kB

可以看到，MemAvailable 比 MemFree的值略小。

MemAvailable的意义如下：

Many load balancing and workload placing programs check /proc/meminfo to estimate how much free memory is available. They generally do this by adding up "free" and "cached", which was fine ten years ago, but is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong today.

It is wrong because Cached includes memory that is not freeable as page cache, for example shared memory segments, tmpfs, and ramfs, and it does not include reclaimable slab memory, which can take up a large fraction of system memory on mostly idle systems with lots of files.Currently, the amount of memory that is available for a new workload,without pushing the system into swap, can be estimated from MemFree, Active(file), Inactive(file), and SReclaimable, as well as the "low"watermarks from /proc/zoneinfo.However, this may change in the future, and user space really should not be expected to know kernel internals to come up with an estimate for the amount of free memory.It is more convenient to provide such an estimate in /proc/meminfo. If things change in the future, we only have to change it in one place.

代码信息如下：

Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> 
Reported-by: Erik Mouw <erik.mouw_2@nxp.com> 
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat
-rw-r--r--	Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt	9	
		
-rw-r--r--	fs/proc/meminfo.c	37	
		
2 files changed, 46 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
index 22d89aa3..8533f5f 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
@@ -767,6 +767,7 @@ The "Locked" indicates whether the mapping is locked in memory or not.
MemTotal: 16344972 kB
MemFree: 13634064 kB
+MemAvailable: 14836172 kB
Buffers: 3656 kB
Cached: 1195708 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
@@ -799,6 +800,14 @@ AnonHugePages: 49152 kB
MemTotal: Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved
bits and the kernel binary code)
MemFree: The sum of LowFree+HighFree
+MemAvailable: An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new
+ applications, without swapping. Calculated from MemFree,
+ SReclaimable, the size of the file LRU lists, and the low
+ watermarks in each zone.
+ The estimate takes into account that the system needs some
+ page cache to function well, and that not all reclaimable
+ slab will be reclaimable, due to items being in use. The
+ impact of those factors will vary from system to system.
Buffers: Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
diff --git a/fs/proc/meminfo.c b/fs/proc/meminfo.c
index a77d2b2..24270ec 100644
--- a/fs/proc/meminfo.c
+++ b/fs/proc/meminfo.c
@@ -26,7 +26,11 @@ static int meminfo_proc_show(struct seq_file *m, void *v)
unsigned long committed;
struct vmalloc_info vmi;
long cached;
+ long available;
+ unsigned long pagecache;
+ unsigned long wmark_low = 0;
unsigned long pages[NR_LRU_LISTS];
+ struct zone *zone;
int lru;
/*
@@ -47,12 +51,44 @@ static int meminfo_proc_show(struct seq_file *m, void *v)
for (lru = LRU_BASE; lru < NR_LRU_LISTS; lru++)
pages[lru] = global_page_state(NR_LRU_BASE + lru);
+ for_each_zone(zone)
+ wmark_low += zone->watermark[WMARK_LOW];
+
+ /*
+ * Estimate the amount of memory available for userspace allocations,
+ * without causing swapping.
+ *
+ * Free memory cannot be taken below the low watermark, before the
+ * system starts swapping.
+ */
+ available = i.freeram - wmark_low;
+
+ /*
+ * Not all the page cache can be freed, otherwise the system will
+ * start swapping. Assume at least half of the page cache, or the
+ * low watermark worth of cache, needs to stay.
+ */
+ pagecache = pages[LRU_ACTIVE_FILE] + pages[LRU_INACTIVE_FILE];
+ pagecache -= min(pagecache / 2, wmark_low);
+ available += pagecache;
+
+ /*
+ * Part of the reclaimable swap consists of items that are in use,
+ * and cannot be freed. Cap this estimate at the low watermark.
+ */
+ available += global_page_state(NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE) -
+ min(global_page_state(NR_SLAB_RECLAIMABLE) / 2, wmark_low);
+
+ if (available < 0)
+ available = 0;
+
/*
* Tagged format, for easy grepping and expansion.
*/
seq_printf(m,
"MemTotal: %8lu kB\n"
"MemFree: %8lu kB\n"
+ "MemAvailable: %8lu kB\n"
"Buffers: %8lu kB\n"
"Cached: %8lu kB\n"
"SwapCached: %8lu kB\n"
@@ -105,6 +141,7 @@ static int meminfo_proc_show(struct seq_file *m, void *v)
,
K(i.totalram),
K(i.freeram),
+ K(available),
K(i.bufferram),
K(cached),
K(total_swapcache_pages()),

https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=34e431b0ae398fc54ea69ff85ec700722c9da773