Re: Swapping for diskless nodes

Pavel Machek
2001-08-09T19:40:47Z

Hi!

> > what is the best/recommended way to do remote swapping via the network
> > for diskless workstations or compute nodes in clusters in Linux 2.4?=20
> > Last time i checked was linux 2.2, and there were some races related=20
> > to network swapping back then. Has this been fixed for 2.4?
>
> The best answer probably is "don't". Networks are high latency things for
> paging and paging is latency sensitive. If performance is not an issue then
> the nbd driver ought to work. You may need to check it uses the
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alan, are you saying it should work reliably?

> right
> GFP_ levels to avoid deadlocks and you might need to up the amount of atomic
> pool memory. Hopefully other hacks arent needed

There still may be some deadlocks. Swapping over nbd seemed to work
for me... until I used mem=8M and did two ping -f's to the victim.

Issue is that you not only need to check nbd, you need to check whole
network layer, too.
Pavel
--
I'm pavel@ucw.cz. "In my country we have almost anarchy and I don't care."
Panos Katsaloulis describing me w.r.t. patents at discuss@linmodems.org