Memory Management in Linux

David Chang OS Lab., NCTU,Taiwan

Agenda
Initialization Page Fault Handling Page Cache and Swap Cache Swap Area Management Copying Virtual Address Spaces

Initialization
paging_init()
set up the page tables to map in all the available physical memory Kernel has the virtual address from 3G~4G physical address = virtual address - 3G (see figure)

free_area_init()
allocate and initialize the page structures
Linux use a page structure for one physical page all page structures are marked as DMAable and RESERVED

allocate and initialize the swap cache and free area list

Address Mapping in Kernel

0

E.g. 16M

3G

4G Virtual address

Physical address

Initialization
mem_init()
fixup the page structures and make all the available pages free.

Page Fault Handling

do_page_fault()
this routine is a dispatcher that is invoked when page fault occurs Works:
find out the faulting address find out the reason for the fault and call the right routine protection fault: do_wp_page() page-not-present fault: do_no_page()

Page Fault Handling

do_wp_page()
handle write protection fault Copy-On-Write if necessary

do_no_page()
used to page-in a page determine the source of the page
Executable file? Swap area ? Or Anonymous page?

Page Fault Handling

Page-in from an executable file
When an executable file is opened, Linux will attach the file operations for the file. The file operations include a mmap( ) function For UFS, this mmap() function points to generic_file_mmap( ) After opening the file, Linux maps segments by do_mmap( ) do_mmap() will actually call the mmap() file operation to attach the vm_operations for the vma The vm operation contains a nopage( ) which is called when page fault occurs( see filemap_nopage() )

Page Fault Handling

do_mmap()
construct a vma insert the vma->vm_op by calling file->f_op->mmap() brings in pages if VM_LOCKED is specified

filemap_nopage()
look for the page from page cache first read-in the page if cache miss read-ahead if necessary

Swap Area Management

do_swap_page()
determine if the vma that contains the faulting page has swapin() vm_operation call swap_in() if the vma doesnt have swapin() vm operation

swap_in()
the default swap in operation: allocate a free page and get the content of the page from the swap area de-allocate the swap page in swap area!!!!!!!

Swap Area Organization

swap_info A swap area lockmap 1111111111111 1111111111111 111 11100000000 00SWAP-SPACE

Swap Area Management

swap_on()
enable a swap area allocate pages for lockmap and swapmap insert the swap area into the swap list

Copying Virtual Address Spaces

When Linux create a new process by fork(), it will call copy_mm() to copy the address space from the father to the child. The child can share the same address space with its father if the CLONE_VM is specified copy_mm()
new_page_tables( )
allocate a page for PTEs and copy the kernel-part PTEs

dup_mmap( )
duplicate the mmap