Current information regarding hugepage usage is a little out of date.
Update it to include information on in-memory mode, as well as on
default mountpoints provided by systemd.
Cc: sta...@dpdk.org
Signed-off-by: Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.bura...@intel.com>
---
Notes:
v2:
- Reworked the description
- Put runtime reservation first, and boot time as an alternative
- Clarified wording and fixed typos
- Mentioned that some kernel versions not supporting reserving 1G pages
doc/guides/linux_gsg/sys_reqs.rst | 71 ++++++++++++++++++++-----------
1 file changed, 45 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-)
diff --git a/doc/guides/linux_gsg/sys_reqs.rst
b/doc/guides/linux_gsg/sys_reqs.rst
index a124656bcb..8782d05579 100644
--- a/doc/guides/linux_gsg/sys_reqs.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/linux_gsg/sys_reqs.rst
@@ -155,8 +155,35 @@ Without hugepages, high TLB miss rates would occur with
the standard 4k page siz
Reserving Hugepages for DPDK Use
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-The allocation of hugepages should be done at boot time or as soon as possible
after system boot
-to prevent memory from being fragmented in physical memory.
+The reservation of hugepages can be performed at run time. This is done by
+echoing the number of hugepages required to a ``nr_hugepages`` file in the
+``/sys/kernel/`` directory corresponding to a specific page size (in
+Kilobytes). For a single-node system, the command to use is as follows
+(assuming that 1024 of 2MB pages are required)::
+
+ echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
+
+On a NUMA machine, the above command will usually divide the number of
hugepages
+equally across all NUMA nodes (assuming there is enough memory on all NUMA
+nodes). However, pages can also be reserved explicitly on individual NUMA
+nodes using a ``nr_hugepages`` file in the ``/sys/devices/`` directory::
+
+ echo 1024 >
/sys/devices/system/node/node0/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
+ echo 1024 >
/sys/devices/system/node/node1/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
+
+.. note::
+
+ Some kernel versions may not allow reserving 1 GB hugepages at run time, so
+ reserving them at boot time may be the only option. Please see below for
+ instructions.
+
+**Alternative:**
+
+In the general case, reserving hugepages at run time is perfectly fine, but in
+use cases where having lots of physically contiguous memory is required, it is
+preferable to reserve hugepages at boot time, as that will help in preventing
+physical memory from becoming heavily fragmented.
+
To reserve hugepages at boot time, a parameter is passed to the Linux kernel
on the kernel command line.
For 2 MB pages, just pass the hugepages option to the kernel. For example, to
reserve 1024 pages of 2 MB, use::
@@ -185,35 +212,27 @@ the number of hugepages reserved at boot time is
generally divided equally betwe
See the Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt file in your Linux
source tree for further details of these and other kernel options.
-**Alternative:**
-
-For 2 MB pages, there is also the option of allocating hugepages after the
system has booted.
-This is done by echoing the number of hugepages required to a nr_hugepages
file in the ``/sys/devices/`` directory.
-For a single-node system, the command to use is as follows (assuming that 1024
pages are required)::
-
- echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
-
-On a NUMA machine, pages should be allocated explicitly on separate nodes::
-
- echo 1024 >
/sys/devices/system/node/node0/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
- echo 1024 >
/sys/devices/system/node/node1/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
-
-.. note::
-
- For 1G pages, it is not possible to reserve the hugepage memory after the
system has booted.
-
Using Hugepages with the DPDK
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-Once the hugepage memory is reserved, to make the memory available for DPDK
use, perform the following steps::
+If secondary process support is not required, DPDK is able to use hugepages
+without any configuration by using "in-memory" mode. Please see
+:ref:`linux_eal_parameters` for more details.
+
+If secondary process support is required, mount points for hugepages need to be
+created. On modern Linux distributions, a default mount point for hugepages is
provided
+by the system and is located at ``/dev/hugepages``. This mount point will use
the
+default hugepage size set by the kernel parameters as described above.
+
+However, in order to use hugepage sizes other than default, it is necessary to
+manually create mount points for hugepage sizes that are not provided by the
+system (e.g. 1GB pages).
+
+To make the hugepages of size 1GB available for DPDK use, perform the
following steps::
mkdir /mnt/huge
- mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/huge
+ mount -t hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB /mnt/huge
The mount point can be made permanent across reboots, by adding the following
line to the ``/etc/fstab`` file::
- nodev /mnt/huge hugetlbfs defaults 0 0
-
-For 1GB pages, the page size must be specified as a mount option::
-
- nodev /mnt/huge_1GB hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB 0 0
+ nodev /mnt/huge hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB 0 0
--
2.17.1
