From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Stephen C. Tweedie" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14199.62834.984162.69753@dukat.scot.redhat.com> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 23:21:38 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: filecache/swapcache questions [RFC] [RFT] [PATCH] kanoj-mm12-2.3.8 In-Reply-To: References: <199906282051.NAA12151@google.engr.sgi.com> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Chuck Lever Cc: Kanoj Sarcar , andrea@suse.de, torvalds@transmeta.com, sct@redhat.com, linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: Hi, On Mon, 28 Jun 1999 17:32:05 -0400 (EDT), Chuck Lever said: > well, except that kswapd itself doesn't free any memory. It has to. That was why kswapd was initially written, to ensure that interrupt memory requests (eg. busy router boxes) don't starve of memory. All of the benefits of kswapd came later. In normal kernels the try_to_swap_out doesn't free memory, true enough, but kswapd calls shrink_mmap() too to make sure it does make real progress in freeing memory. > if you need evidence that shrink_mmap() will keep a system running without > swapping, just run 2.3.8 :) :) 2.3.8 shows up slower on several benchmarks because of its reluctance to swap. --Stephen -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://humbolt.geo.uu.nl/Linux-MM/