Re: [highmem bug report against -test5 and -test6] Re: [PATCH] Re: simple FS application that hangs 2.4-test5, mem mgmt problem or FS buffer cache mgmt problem? (fwd)

[Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > 
> > OK, so we want something like the following in
> > refill_inactive_scan() ?
> > 
> > if (free_shortage() && inactive_shortage() && page->mapping &&
> > 			page->buffers)
> > 	try_to_free_buffers(page, 0);
> 
> That's just nasty.
> 
> Why not just do it unconditionally whenever we do the
> age_page_down_ageonly(page) too? Simply something like
> 
> 	if (page->buffers)
> 		try_to_free_buffers(page, 1);

You will want to add page->mapping too, so we won't be kicking
buffermem data out of memory when we don't need to.

Also, you really want to free the bufferheads on the pages that
are in heavy use (say glibc shared ages) too...

> (and yes, I think it should also start background writing - we
> probably need the gfp_mask to know whether we can do that).

Background writing is done by kupdate / kflushd.

> I hate code that tries to be clever. 

*nod*

You're right that my last idea was too complicated ;)

regards,

Rik
--
"What you're running that piece of shit Gnome?!?!"
       -- Miguel de Icaza, UKUUG 2000

http://www.conectiva.com/		http://www.surriel.com/

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