zram: support idle/huge page writeback

Add a new feature "zram idle/huge page writeback".  In the zram-swap use
case, zram usually has many idle/huge swap pages.  It's pointless to keep
them in memory (ie, zram).

To solve this problem, this feature introduces idle/huge page writeback to
the backing device so the goal is to save more memory space on embedded
systems.

Normal sequence to use idle/huge page writeback feature is as follows,

while (1) {
        # mark allocated zram slot to idle
        echo all > /sys/block/zram0/idle
        # leave system working for several hours
        # Unless there is no access for some blocks on zram,
	# they are still IDLE marked pages.

        echo "idle" > /sys/block/zram0/writeback
	or/and
	echo "huge" > /sys/block/zram0/writeback
        # write the IDLE or/and huge marked slot into backing device
	# and free the memory.
}

Per the discussion at
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20181122065926.GG3441@jagdpanzerIV/T/#u,

This patch removes direct incommpressibe page writeback feature
(d2afd25114f4 ("zram: write incompressible pages to backing device")).

Below concerns from Sergey:
== &< ==

"IDLE writeback" is superior to "incompressible writeback".

"incompressible writeback" is completely unpredictable and uncontrollable;
it depens on data patterns and compression algorithms.  While "IDLE
writeback" is predictable.

I even suspect, that, *ideally*, we can remove "incompressible writeback".
"IDLE pages" is a super set which also includes "incompressible" pages.
So, technically, we still can do "incompressible writeback" from "IDLE
writeback" path; but a much more reasonable one, based on a page idling
period.

I understand that you want to keep "direct incompressible writeback"
around.  ZRAM is especially popular on devices which do suffer from flash
wearout, so I can see "incompressible writeback" path becoming a dead
code, long term.

== &< ==

Below concerns from Minchan:
== &< ==

My concern is if we enable CONFIG_ZRAM_WRITEBACK in this implementation,
both hugepage/idlepage writeck will turn on.  However someuser want to
enable only idlepage writeback so we need to introduce turn on/off knob
for hugepage or new CONFIG_ZRAM_IDLEPAGE_WRITEBACK for those usecase.  I
don't want to make it complicated *if possible*.

Long term, I imagine we need to make VM aware of new swap hierarchy a
little bit different with as-is.  For example, first high priority swap
can return -EIO or -ENOCOMP, swap try to fallback to next lower priority
swap device.  With that, hugepage writeback will work tranparently.

So we could regard it as regression because incompressible pages doesn't
go to backing storage automatically.  Instead, user should do it via "echo
huge" > /sys/block/zram/writeback" manually.

== &< ==

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181127055429.251614-6-minchan@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Joey Pabalinas <joeypabalinas@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 24 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt b/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt
index f3bcd716d8a9..806cdaabac83 100644
--- a/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt
+++ b/Documentation/blockdev/zram.txt
@@ -238,11 +238,31 @@ line of text and contains the following stats separated by whitespace:
 
 = writeback
 
-With incompressible pages, there is no memory saving with zram.
-Instead, with CONFIG_ZRAM_WRITEBACK, zram can write incompressible page
+With CONFIG_ZRAM_WRITEBACK, zram can write idle/incompressible page
 to backing storage rather than keeping it in memory.
-User should set up backing device via /sys/block/zramX/backing_dev
-before disksize setting.
+To use the feature, admin should set up backing device via
+
+	"echo /dev/sda5 > /sys/block/zramX/backing_dev"
+
+before disksize setting. It supports only partition at this moment.
+If admin want to use incompressible page writeback, they could do via
+
+	"echo huge > /sys/block/zramX/write"
+
+To use idle page writeback, first, user need to declare zram pages
+as idle.
+
+	"echo all > /sys/block/zramX/idle"
+
+From now on, any pages on zram are idle pages. The idle mark
+will be removed until someone request access of the block.
+IOW, unless there is access request, those pages are still idle pages.
+
+Admin can request writeback of those idle pages at right timing via
+
+	"echo idle > /sys/block/zramX/writeback"
+
+With the command, zram writeback idle pages from memory to the storage.
 
 = memory tracking