[PATCH] statm: shared = rss - anon_rss
The third "shared" field of /proc/$pid/statm in 2.4 was a count of pages in the mm whose page_count is more than 1 (oddly, including pages shared just with swapcache). That's too costly to calculate each time, so 2.6 changed it to the total file-backed extent. But Andrea knows apps and users surprised when (rss - shared) goes negative: we need to provide an rss-like statistic, close to the 2.4 interpretation. Something that's quick and easy to maintain accurately is mm->anon_rss, the count of anonymous pages in the mm. Then shared = rss - anon_rss gives a pretty good and meaningful approximation to 2.4's intention: wli confirms that this will be useful to Oracle too. Where to show it? I think it's best to treat this as a bugfix and show it in the third field of /proc/$pid/statm, after resident, as before - there's no evidence that the total file-backed extent was found useful. Albert would like other fields to revert to page counts, but that's a lot harder: if mprotect can change the category of a page, then it can't be accounted as simply as this. Only go that route if real need shown. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Acked-by: William Irwin <wli@holomorphy.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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