Re: arca-vm-8 [Re: [patch] arca-vm-6, killed kswapd [Re: [patch] new-vm , improvement , [Re: 2.2.0 Bug summary]]]

Linus Torvalds
1999-01-07T23:53:15Z

On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > The basic reason I didn't want to do this was that I thought it was wrong
> > to try to base _any_ decision on any virtual memory sizes. The reason is
> > simply that I think RSS isn't a very interesting thing to look at.
>
> But now I am not looking at RSS, I am looking only at total_vm. The point
> of the patch is only to be _balanced_ between passes even if in the system
> there are some processes with a total_vm of 1Giga and some processes that
> has a total_vm of 1kbyte. In normal conditions the patch _should_ make no
> differences... This in my theory at least ;)

Ehh, and how do you protect against somebody playing games with your mind
by doing _huge_ mappings of something that takes no real memory? The VM
footprint of a process is not necessarily related to how much physical
memory you use.

Basically, I think the thing should either be simple or right, and yours
is somewhere in between - neither simple nor strictly correct.

Also, I've been happily deleting code, and it has worked wonderfully. This
patch adds logic and code back.

Linus