From 715ea41e60277f28f84d6c937737350e00955d56 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Zheng Liu Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 15:08:30 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] mm: improve the description for dirty_background_ratio/dirty_ratio sysctl Now dirty_background_ratio/dirty_ratio contains a percentage of total avaiable memory, which contains free pages and reclaimable pages. The number of these pages is not equal to the number of total system memory. But they are described as a percentage of total system memory in Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt. So we need to fix them to avoid misunderstanding. Signed-off-by: Zheng Liu Cc: Rob Landley Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt | 15 ++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt index 79a797eb3e87..1fbd4eb7b64a 100644 --- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt +++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt @@ -119,8 +119,11 @@ other appears as 0 when read. dirty_background_ratio -Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which -the background kernel flusher threads will start writing out dirty data. +Contains, as a percentage of total available memory that contains free pages +and reclaimable pages, the number of pages at which the background kernel +flusher threads will start writing out dirty data. + +The total avaiable memory is not equal to total system memory. ============================================================== @@ -151,9 +154,11 @@ interval will be written out next time a flusher thread wakes up. dirty_ratio -Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which -a process which is generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty -data. +Contains, as a percentage of total available memory that contains free pages +and reclaimable pages, the number of pages at which a process which is +generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty data. + +The total avaiable memory is not equal to total system memory. ============================================================== -- 2.34.1