From: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Subject: [PATCH 2/2] posix_fadvise.2: Document the behaviour of partial page discard requests
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 00:42:47 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1417567367-9298-3-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1417567367-9298-1-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de>
It is not obvious from the interface that partial page discard requests
are ignored. It should be spelled out.
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
---
man2/posix_fadvise.2 | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
diff --git a/man2/posix_fadvise.2 b/man2/posix_fadvise.2
index 25d0c50..07313a9 100644
--- a/man2/posix_fadvise.2
+++ b/man2/posix_fadvise.2
@@ -144,6 +144,11 @@ A program may periodically request the kernel to free cached data
that has already been used, so that more useful cached pages are not
discarded instead.
+Requests to discard partial pages are ignored. It is preferable to preserve
+needed data than discard unneeded data. If the application requires that
+data be considered for discarding then \fIoffset\fP and \fIlen\fP must be
+page-aligned.
+
Pages that have not yet been written out will be unaffected, so if the
application wishes to guarantee that pages will be released, it should
call
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-12-03 0:42 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-12-03 0:42 [PATCH 0/2] Improve documentation of FADV_DONTNEED behaviour Mel Gorman
2014-12-03 0:42 ` [PATCH 1/2] mm: fadvise: Document the fadvise(FADV_DONTNEED) behaviour for partial pages Mel Gorman
2014-12-03 0:42 ` Mel Gorman [this message]
2014-12-30 20:48 ` [PATCH 2/2] posix_fadvise.2: Document the behaviour of partial page discard requests Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2014-12-30 20:51 ` [PATCH 0/2] Improve documentation of FADV_DONTNEED behaviour Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
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