[merged mm-stable] mm-page_owner-document-page_owner-filter.patch removed from -mm tree
Andrew Morton <[email protected]> Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:14:04 -0700
| Newsgroups | org.kernel.vger.mm-commits |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
The quilt patch titled
Subject: mm/page_owner: document page_owner filter
has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was
mm-page_owner-document-page_owner-filter.patch
This patch was dropped because it was merged into the mm-stable branch
of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
------------------------------------------------------
From: Zhen Ni <[email protected]>
Subject: mm/page_owner: document page_owner filter
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2026 19:54:11 +0800
Add documentation for the page_owner_filter userspace tool and
kernel-level filtering features.
[[email protected]: avoid docs build warning]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/[email protected]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Zhen Ni <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Zi Yan <[email protected]>
Cc: Brendan Jackman <[email protected]>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <[email protected]>
Cc: Michal Hocko <[email protected]>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
---
Documentation/mm/page_owner.rst | 78 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 76 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
--- a/Documentation/mm/page_owner.rst~mm-page_owner-document-page_owner-filter
+++ a/Documentation/mm/page_owner.rst
@@ -65,7 +65,15 @@ un-tracking state.
Usage
=====
-1) Build user-space helper::
+1) Build user-space helpers:
+::
+
+ To filter page_owner output:
+
+ cd tools/mm
+ make page_owner_filter
+
+ To sort and analyze page_owner output:
cd tools/mm
make page_owner_sort
@@ -74,7 +82,11 @@ Usage
3) Do the job that you want to debug.
-4) Analyze information from page owner::
+4) (Optional) Filter page_owner output::
+
+ ./page_owner_filter -m handle -n 0,1,2 > filtered_page_owner.txt
+
+5) Analyze information from page owner::
cat /sys/kernel/debug/page_owner_stacks/show_stacks > stacks.txt
cat stacks.txt
@@ -263,3 +275,65 @@ STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS
f free whether the page has been released or not
st stacktrace stack trace of the page allocation
ator allocator memory allocator for pages
+
+Filtering page_owner output
+============================
+
+page_owner supports filtering output at the kernel level before reading,
+which reduces the amount of data that needs to be processed in userspace.
+
+The page_owner_filter tool provides a convenient interface for this filtering
+capability. It supports two types of filters:
+
+1. **print_mode filter**: Control what information is printed for each page
+ - ``stack``: Print full stack traces (default, compatible with existing usage)
+ - ``handle``: Print only stack handle numbers (much faster, smaller output)
+ - ``stack_handle``: Print both stack traces and handle numbers
+
+ The ``handle`` mode uses numeric identifiers instead of full stack traces.
+ The mapping from handles to actual stack traces can be obtained via the
+ show_stacks_handles interface.
+
+2. **NUMA node filter**: Filter pages by NUMA node ID
+ - Supports single node: ``-n 0``
+ - Multiple nodes: ``-n 0,1,2``
+ - Ranges: ``-n 0-3``
+ - Mixed format: ``-n 0,2-3,5``
+
+Usage examples::
+
+ # Filter by print mode
+ ./page_owner_filter -m handle
+ ./page_owner_filter -m stack_handle
+
+ # Filter by NUMA node
+ ./page_owner_filter -n 0
+ ./page_owner_filter -n 0-3
+
+ # Combined filters
+ ./page_owner_filter -m stack -n 0,1,2
+ ./page_owner_filter -m handle -n 0,2-3
+
+ # Save to file
+ ./page_owner_filter -m handle -o filtered_output.txt
+
+The handle mode is particularly useful for monitoring and performance-critical
+scenarios as it dramatically reduces output size. Testing shows handle mode can
+reduce output size by ~66% (84MB vs 244MB) and improve read performance by ~4.4x
+compared to full stack output.
+
+The NUMA node filter is useful for NUMA-aware memory allocation analysis and debugging.
+
+Behind the scenes, page_owner_filter opens /sys/kernel/debug/page_owner and
+writes filter commands before reading the filtered output. The filtering uses
+per-file-descriptor state, allowing each open() to have independent filter settings.
+
+Each file descriptor maintains its own filter state, so you can have multiple
+independent filtering operations running concurrently. For example, in different
+terminals you can run different filters simultaneously::
+
+ # Terminal 1: Filter node 0
+ ./page_owner_filter -n 0 > node0_output.txt
+
+ # Terminal 2: Filter node 1 (runs concurrently)
+ ./page_owner_filter -n 1 > node1_output.txt
_
Patches currently in -mm which might be from [email protected] are