1===== 2zswap 3===== 4 5Overview 6======== 7 8Zswap is a lightweight compressed cache for swap pages. It takes pages that are 9in the process of being swapped out and attempts to compress them into a 10dynamically allocated RAM-based memory pool. zswap basically trades CPU cycles 11for potentially reduced swap I/O. This trade-off can also result in a 12significant performance improvement if reads from the compressed cache are 13faster than reads from a swap device. 14 15Some potential benefits: 16 17* Desktop/laptop users with limited RAM capacities can mitigate the 18 performance impact of swapping. 19* Overcommitted guests that share a common I/O resource can 20 dramatically reduce their swap I/O pressure, avoiding heavy handed I/O 21 throttling by the hypervisor. This allows more work to get done with less 22 impact to the guest workload and guests sharing the I/O subsystem 23* Users with SSDs as swap devices can extend the life of the device by 24 drastically reducing life-shortening writes. 25 26Zswap evicts pages from compressed cache on an LRU basis to the backing swap 27device when the compressed pool reaches its size limit. This requirement had 28been identified in prior community discussions. 29 30Whether Zswap is enabled at the boot time depends on whether 31the ``CONFIG_ZSWAP_DEFAULT_ON`` Kconfig option is enabled or not. 32This setting can then be overridden by providing the kernel command line 33``zswap.enabled=`` option, for example ``zswap.enabled=0``. 34Zswap can also be enabled and disabled at runtime using the sysfs interface. 35An example command to enable zswap at runtime, assuming sysfs is mounted 36at ``/sys``, is:: 37 38 echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled 39 40When zswap is disabled at runtime it will stop storing pages that are 41being swapped out. However, it will _not_ immediately write out or fault 42back into memory all of the pages stored in the compressed pool. The 43pages stored in zswap will remain in the compressed pool until they are 44either invalidated or faulted back into memory. In order to force all 45pages out of the compressed pool, a swapoff on the swap device(s) will 46fault back into memory all swapped out pages, including those in the 47compressed pool. 48 49Design 50====== 51 52Zswap receives pages for compression from the swap subsystem and is able to 53evict pages from its own compressed pool on an LRU basis and write them back to 54the backing swap device in the case that the compressed pool is full. 55 56Zswap makes use of zpool for the managing the compressed memory pool. Each 57allocation in zpool is not directly accessible by address. Rather, a handle is 58returned by the allocation routine and that handle must be mapped before being 59accessed. The compressed memory pool grows on demand and shrinks as compressed 60pages are freed. The pool is not preallocated. By default, a zpool 61of type selected in ``CONFIG_ZSWAP_ZPOOL_DEFAULT`` Kconfig option is created, 62but it can be overridden at boot time by setting the ``zpool`` attribute, 63e.g. ``zswap.zpool=zbud``. It can also be changed at runtime using the sysfs 64``zpool`` attribute, e.g.:: 65 66 echo zbud > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/zpool 67 68The zbud type zpool allocates exactly 1 page to store 2 compressed pages, which 69means the compression ratio will always be 2:1 or worse (because of half-full 70zbud pages). The zsmalloc type zpool has a more complex compressed page 71storage method, and it can achieve greater storage densities. 72 73When a swap page is passed from swapout to zswap, zswap maintains a mapping 74of the swap entry, a combination of the swap type and swap offset, to the zpool 75handle that references that compressed swap page. This mapping is achieved 76with a red-black tree per swap type. The swap offset is the search key for the 77tree nodes. 78 79During a page fault on a PTE that is a swap entry, the swapin code calls the 80zswap load function to decompress the page into the page allocated by the page 81fault handler. 82 83Once there are no PTEs referencing a swap page stored in zswap (i.e. the count 84in the swap_map goes to 0) the swap code calls the zswap invalidate function 85to free the compressed entry. 86 87Zswap seeks to be simple in its policies. Sysfs attributes allow for one user 88controlled policy: 89 90* max_pool_percent - The maximum percentage of memory that the compressed 91 pool can occupy. 92 93The default compressor is selected in ``CONFIG_ZSWAP_COMPRESSOR_DEFAULT`` 94Kconfig option, but it can be overridden at boot time by setting the 95``compressor`` attribute, e.g. ``zswap.compressor=lzo``. 96It can also be changed at runtime using the sysfs "compressor" 97attribute, e.g.:: 98 99 echo lzo > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor 100 101When the zpool and/or compressor parameter is changed at runtime, any existing 102compressed pages are not modified; they are left in their own zpool. When a 103request is made for a page in an old zpool, it is uncompressed using its 104original compressor. Once all pages are removed from an old zpool, the zpool 105and its compressor are freed. 106 107Some of the pages in zswap are same-value filled pages (i.e. contents of the 108page have same value or repetitive pattern). These pages include zero-filled 109pages and they are handled differently. During store operation, a page is 110checked if it is a same-value filled page before compressing it. If true, the 111compressed length of the page is set to zero and the pattern or same-filled 112value is stored. 113 114Same-value filled pages identification feature is enabled by default and can be 115disabled at boot time by setting the ``same_filled_pages_enabled`` attribute 116to 0, e.g. ``zswap.same_filled_pages_enabled=0``. It can also be enabled and 117disabled at runtime using the sysfs ``same_filled_pages_enabled`` 118attribute, e.g.:: 119 120 echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/same_filled_pages_enabled 121 122When zswap same-filled page identification is disabled at runtime, it will stop 123checking for the same-value filled pages during store operation. 124In other words, every page will be then considered non-same-value filled. 125However, the existing pages which are marked as same-value filled pages remain 126stored unchanged in zswap until they are either loaded or invalidated. 127 128In some circumstances it might be advantageous to make use of just the zswap 129ability to efficiently store same-filled pages without enabling the whole 130compressed page storage. 131In this case the handling of non-same-value pages by zswap (enabled by default) 132can be disabled by setting the ``non_same_filled_pages_enabled`` attribute 133to 0, e.g. ``zswap.non_same_filled_pages_enabled=0``. 134It can also be enabled and disabled at runtime using the sysfs 135``non_same_filled_pages_enabled`` attribute, e.g.:: 136 137 echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/non_same_filled_pages_enabled 138 139Disabling both ``zswap.same_filled_pages_enabled`` and 140``zswap.non_same_filled_pages_enabled`` effectively disables accepting any new 141pages by zswap. 142 143To prevent zswap from shrinking pool when zswap is full and there's a high 144pressure on swap (this will result in flipping pages in and out zswap pool 145without any real benefit but with a performance drop for the system), a 146special parameter has been introduced to implement a sort of hysteresis to 147refuse taking pages into zswap pool until it has sufficient space if the limit 148has been hit. To set the threshold at which zswap would start accepting pages 149again after it became full, use the sysfs ``accept_threshold_percent`` 150attribute, e. g.:: 151 152 echo 80 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/accept_threshold_percent 153 154Setting this parameter to 100 will disable the hysteresis. 155 156Some users cannot tolerate the swapping that comes with zswap store failures 157and zswap writebacks. Swapping can be disabled entirely (without disabling 158zswap itself) on a cgroup-basis as follows:: 159 160 echo 0 > /sys/fs/cgroup/<cgroup-name>/memory.zswap.writeback 161 162Note that if the store failures are recurring (for e.g if the pages are 163incompressible), users can observe reclaim inefficiency after disabling 164writeback (because the same pages might be rejected again and again). 165 166When there is a sizable amount of cold memory residing in the zswap pool, it 167can be advantageous to proactively write these cold pages to swap and reclaim 168the memory for other use cases. By default, the zswap shrinker is disabled. 169User can enable it as follows:: 170 171 echo Y > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/shrinker_enabled 172 173This can be enabled at the boot time if ``CONFIG_ZSWAP_SHRINKER_DEFAULT_ON`` is 174selected. 175 176A debugfs interface is provided for various statistic about pool size, number 177of pages stored, same-value filled pages and various counters for the reasons 178pages are rejected. 179