[patch] vmfixes-2.4.0-test9-B2 - fixing deadlocks

[bert hubert <ahu@ds9a.nl>]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 12:13:42AM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 24, 2000 at 10:43:03PM +0100, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:
> > any form of serialisation on the quota file).  This feels like rather
> > a lot of new and interesting deadlocks to be introducing so late in
> > 2.4.  :-)

True. But they also appear to be found and solved at an impressive rate.
These deadlocks are fatal and don't hide in corners, whereas the previous mm
problems used to be very hard to spot and fix, there not being real
showstoppers, except for abysmal performance. [1]

Since Rik's stuff was merged, the number of eyeball hours devoted to MM have
skyrocketed, whereas the previous incarnations had far smaller audiences.
The patches are barely a week in, and look how much has been improved that
hadn't been found by the people working with Rik.

It's tempting to revert the merge, but let's work at it a bit longer. There
are problems, but we are solving them rapidly and both performance and
design of the new MM are pretty pleasing.

Let's not waste this opportunity.

Regards,

bert hubert


[1] bad performance is not often attributed to the Linux kernel - people
just assume that their problem is hard, because they don't have experience
with other unixes that might outperform us. We may be running Solaris and
other unices for reference, but your average user isn't.


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