Merge branch 'master' into for-linus

[sfrench/cifs-2.6.git] / Documentation / sysctl / vm.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 6c7d18c53f8454c7d9ea93317595e7c22da953ed..5fdbb612aeb840af5c5eec80103c660be3da6c06 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ files can be found in mm/swap.c.
 Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
 
 - block_dump
+- compact_memory
 - dirty_background_bytes
 - dirty_background_ratio
 - dirty_bytes
@@ -26,6 +27,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
 - dirty_ratio
 - dirty_writeback_centisecs
 - drop_caches
+- extfrag_threshold
 - hugepages_treat_as_movable
 - hugetlb_shm_group
 - laptop_mode
@@ -64,6 +66,15 @@ information on block I/O debugging is in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
 
 ==============================================================
 
+compact_memory
+
+Available only when CONFIG_COMPACTION is set. When 1 is written to the file,
+all zones are compacted such that free memory is available in contiguous
+blocks where possible. This can be important for example in the allocation of
+huge pages although processes will also directly compact memory as required.
+
+==============================================================
+
 dirty_background_bytes
 
 Contains the amount of dirty memory at which the pdflush background writeback
@@ -139,6 +150,20 @@ user should run `sync' first.
 
 ==============================================================
 
+extfrag_threshold
+
+This parameter affects whether the kernel will compact memory or direct
+reclaim to satisfy a high-order allocation. /proc/extfrag_index shows what
+the fragmentation index for each order is in each zone in the system. Values
+tending towards 0 imply allocations would fail due to lack of memory,
+values towards 1000 imply failures are due to fragmentation and -1 implies
+that the allocation will succeed as long as watermarks are met.
+
+The kernel will not compact memory in a zone if the
+fragmentation index is <= extfrag_threshold. The default value is 500.
+
+==============================================================
+
 hugepages_treat_as_movable
 
 This parameter is only useful when kernelcore= is specified at boot time to