Re: [PATCH][1/2] return values shrink_dcache_memory etc

[William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 10:04:29PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> I'd suggest that we avoid putting any additional changes into
> the VM until we have solutions available for:
> 2: Make it work with pte-highmem  (Bill Irwin is signed up for this)
> 4: Move the pte_chains into highmem too (Bill, I guess)
> 6: maybe GC the pte_chain backing pages. (Seems unavoidable.  Rik?)
> Especially pte_chains in highmem.  Failure to fix this well
> is a showstopper for rmap on large ia32 machines, which makes
> it a showstopper full stop.

I'll send you an update of my solution for (6), the initial version of
which was posted earlier today, in a separate post.

highpte_chain will do (2) and (4) simultaneously when it's debugged.


On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 10:04:29PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> If we can get something in place which works acceptably on Martin
> Bligh's machines, and we can see that the gains of rmap (whatever
> they are ;)) are worth the as-yet uncoded pains then let's move on.
> But until then, adding new stuff to the VM just makes a `patch -R'
> harder to do.

I have the same kinds of machines and have already been testing with
precisely the many tasks workloads he's concerned about for the sake of
correctness, and efficiency is also a concern here. highpte_chain is
already so high up on my priority queue that all other work is halted.


Cheers,
Bill