I've been doing some testing involving large amounts of
page cache.  It's quite painful to get hundreds of GB
of page cache mapped in, especially when I am trying to
do it in parallel threads.  This is true even when the
page cache is already allocated and I only need to map
it in.  The test:

1. take 160 16MB files
2. clone 160 threads, mmap the 16MB files, and either
  a. walk through the file touching each page
  b. run MADV_POPULATE on the file
3. MADV_DONTNEED on the mmap()'d area

160 threads/processes:
            faulting | MADV_POPULATE
  Threads:       698 |        102239 (146x speedup)
Proceeses:    154247 |        297518 (1.9x speedup)

single threaded:
            faulting | MADV_POPULATE
                1908 |          3710 (1.9x speedup)

To fix the thread suckage, this patch just walks the
VMAs and maps all the pages in.  Since it does a
bunch of them in one go, it amortizes the cost of
acquiring the mmap_sem across all of those pages.

FAQ:

Why do threads suck so much?

        Bouncing the mmap_sem cacheline around, plus anything
        else that we write to during a fault.  We do one page,
        move the cachelines to another CPU, do one more page,
        etc...

Does MADV_DONTNEED work for this?

        No.  It brings the pages in to the page cache, but
        does not map them the way it is implemented at the
        moment.  I guess we'd be within our rights to make
        it behave like MADV_POPULATE if we want though.



---

 linux.git-davehans/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h |    1 
 linux.git-davehans/mm/madvise.c                           |   40 +++++++++++++-
 2 files changed, 40 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff -puN include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h~madv_populate 
include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h
--- linux.git/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h~madv_populate      
2013-06-27 15:22:35.651854196 -0700
+++ linux.git-davehans/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h   2013-06-27 
15:22:35.656854418 -0700
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@
 #define MADV_DONTDUMP   16             /* Explicity exclude from the core dump,
                                           overrides the coredump filter bits */
 #define MADV_DODUMP    17              /* Clear the MADV_NODUMP flag */
+#define MADV_POPULATE  18              /* Fill in mapping like faults would */
 
 /* compatibility flags */
 #define MAP_FILE       0
diff -puN mm/madvise.c~madv_populate mm/madvise.c
--- linux.git/mm/madvise.c~madv_populate        2013-06-27 15:22:35.652854240 
-0700
+++ linux.git-davehans/mm/madvise.c     2013-06-27 15:22:35.656854418 -0700
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
 #include <linux/blkdev.h>
 #include <linux/swap.h>
 #include <linux/swapops.h>
+#include "internal.h"
 
 /*
  * Any behaviour which results in changes to the vma->vm_flags needs to
@@ -31,6 +32,7 @@ static int madvise_need_mmap_write(int b
        case MADV_REMOVE:
        case MADV_WILLNEED:
        case MADV_DONTNEED:
+       case MADV_POPULATE:
                return 0;
        default:
                /* be safe, default to 1. list exceptions explicitly */
@@ -252,6 +254,39 @@ static long madvise_willneed(struct vm_a
 }
 
 /*
+ * Do not just populate the page cache (WILLNEED), also map the pages.
+ */
+static long madvise_populate(struct vm_area_struct * vma,
+                            struct vm_area_struct ** prev,
+                            unsigned long start, unsigned long end)
+{
+       struct file *file = vma->vm_file;
+       int locked = 1;
+       int ret;
+
+       if (file && file->f_mapping->a_ops->get_xip_mem) {
+               /* no bad return value, but ignore advice */
+               return 0;
+       }
+
+       ret = __mlock_vma_pages_range(vma, start, end, &locked);
+       /*
+        * Make sure that out down_read() matches (read vs.
+        * write) what we did in sys_madvise.
+        */
+       BUG_ON(madvise_need_mmap_write(MADV_POPULATE));
+       if (!locked) {
+               down_read(&current->mm->mmap_sem);
+               /* tell sys_madvise we drop mmap_sem: */
+               *prev = NULL;
+       } else {
+               *prev = vma;
+       }
+
+       return ret;
+}
+
+/*
  * Application no longer needs these pages.  If the pages are dirty,
  * it's OK to just throw them away.  The app will be more careful about
  * data it wants to keep.  Be sure to free swap resources too.  The
@@ -378,6 +413,8 @@ madvise_vma(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
                return madvise_remove(vma, prev, start, end);
        case MADV_WILLNEED:
                return madvise_willneed(vma, prev, start, end);
+       case MADV_POPULATE:
+               return madvise_populate(vma, prev, start, end);
        case MADV_DONTNEED:
                return madvise_dontneed(vma, prev, start, end);
        default:
@@ -407,6 +444,7 @@ madvise_behavior_valid(int behavior)
 #endif
        case MADV_DONTDUMP:
        case MADV_DODUMP:
+       case MADV_POPULATE:
                return 1;
 
        default:
@@ -536,7 +574,7 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE3(madvise, unsigned long,
                        goto out;
                if (prev)
                        vma = prev->vm_next;
-               else    /* madvise_remove dropped mmap_sem */
+               else    /* madvise_remove/populate dropped mmap_sem */
                        vma = find_vma(current->mm, start);
        }
 out:
_
--
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