Commit 90c9cc40 authored by Paul Jackson's avatar Paul Jackson Committed by Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] cpuset: remove marker_pid documentation

Remove documentation for the cpuset 'marker_pid' feature, that was in the
patch "cpuset: change marker for relative numbering" That patch was previously
pulled from *-mm at my (pj) request.
Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
parent bd5e09cf
......@@ -16,9 +16,8 @@ CONTENTS:
1.3 How are cpusets implemented ?
1.4 What are exclusive cpusets ?
1.5 What does notify_on_release do ?
1.6 What is a marker_pid ?
1.7 What is memory_pressure ?
1.8 How do I use cpusets ?
1.6 What is memory_pressure ?
1.7 How do I use cpusets ?
2. Usage Examples and Syntax
2.1 Basic Usage
2.2 Adding/removing cpus
......@@ -178,7 +177,6 @@ containing the following files describing that cpuset:
- mem_exclusive flag: is memory placement exclusive?
- tasks: list of tasks (by pid) attached to that cpuset
- notify_on_release flag: run /sbin/cpuset_release_agent on exit?
- marker_pid: pid of user task in co-ordinated operation sequence
- memory_pressure: measure of how much paging pressure in cpuset
In addition, the root cpuset only has the following file:
......@@ -260,47 +258,7 @@ boot is disabled (0). The default value of other cpusets at creation
is the current value of their parents notify_on_release setting.
1.6 What is a marker_pid ?
--------------------------
The marker_pid helps manage cpuset changes safely from user space.
The interface presented to user space for cpusets uses system wide
numbering of CPUs and Memory Nodes. It is the responsibility of
user level code, presumably in a library, to present cpuset-relative
numbering to applications when that would be more useful to them.
However if a task is moved to a different cpuset, or if the 'cpus' or
'mems' of a cpuset are changed, then we need a way for such library
code to detect that its cpuset-relative numbering has changed, when
expressed using system wide numbering.
The kernel cannot safely allow user code to lock kernel resources.
The kernel could deliver out-of-band notice of cpuset changes by
such mechanisms as signals or usermodehelper callbacks, however
this can't be synchronously delivered to library code linked in
applications without intruding on the IPC mechanisms available to
the app. The kernel could require user level code to do all the work,
tracking the cpuset state before and during changes, to verify no
unexpected change occurred, but this becomes an onerous task.
The "marker_pid" cpuset field provides a simple way to make this task
less onerous on user library code. A task writes its pid to a cpusets
"marker_pid" at the start of a sequence of queries and updates,
and check as it goes that the cpusets marker_pid doesn't change.
The pread(2) system call does a seek and read in a single call.
If the marker_pid changes, the user code should retry the required
sequence of operations.
Anytime that a task modifies the "cpus" or "mems" of a cpuset,
unless it's pid is in the cpusets marker_pid field, the kernel zeros
this field.
The above was inspired by the load linked and store conditional
(ll/sc) instructions in the MIPS II instruction set.
1.7 What is memory_pressure ?
1.6 What is memory_pressure ?
-----------------------------
The memory_pressure of a cpuset provides a simple per-cpuset metric
of the rate that the tasks in a cpuset are attempting to free up in
......@@ -357,7 +315,7 @@ the tasks in the cpuset, in units of reclaims attempted per second,
times 1000.
1.8 How do I use cpusets ?
1.7 How do I use cpusets ?
--------------------------
In order to minimize the impact of cpusets on critical kernel
......
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