Re: 2.5.73-mm2

Hugh Dickins
2003-07-01T11:08:03Z

On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 11:46:34AM +0100, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > If you pursued it, wouldn't your patch also need to change
> > nr_free_buffer_pages() to do what you think it does, count
> > the free lowmem pages? It, and nr_free_pagecache_pages(),
> > and nr_free_zone_pages(), are horribly badly named. They
> > count present_pages-pages_high, they don't count free pages:
> > okay for initialization estimates, useless for anything dynamic.
>
> Well, I was mostly looking for getting handed back 0 when lowmem is
> empty; I actually did realize they didn't give entirely accurate counts
> of free lowmem pages.

I'm not pleading for complete accuracy, but nr_free_buffer_pages()
will never hand back 0 (if your system managed to boot).
It's a static count of present_pages (adjusted), not of
free pages. Or am I misreading nr_free_zone_pages()?

Hugh