From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 21:00:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Lever Subject: Re: filecache/swapcache questions [RFC] [RFT] [PATCH] kanoj-mm12-2.3.8 In-Reply-To: <14199.62834.984162.69753@dukat.scot.redhat.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: "Stephen C. Tweedie" Cc: Kanoj Sarcar , andrea@suse.de, torvalds@transmeta.com, linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote: > 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. again, foot in mouth. i meant kswapd doesn't free any memory *by simply swapping*. that's what i get for typing when i'm hungry. > > 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. right, agreed. but it doesn't stall, it just slows down. - Chuck Lever -- corporate: personal: or The Linux Scalability project: http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/linux-scalability/ -- 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/