Re: Linux-2.1.129..

Linus Torvalds
1998-11-23T20:04:26Z

On 23 Nov 1998, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>
> ST> That would be true if we didn't do the free_page_and_swap_cache trick.
> ST> However, doing that would require two passes: once by the swapper, and
> ST> once by shrink_mmap(): before actually freeing a page.

This is something I considered doing. It has various advantages, and it's
almost done already in a sense: the swap cache thing is what would act as
the buffer between the two passes.

Then the page table scanning would never really page anything out: it
would just move things into the swap cache. That makes the table scanner
simpler, actually. The real page-out would be when the swap-cache is
flushed to disk and then freed.

I'd like to see this, although I think it's way too late for 2.2

Linus