From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263019AbUEaNdu (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 May 2004 09:33:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264386AbUEaNdu (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 May 2004 09:33:50 -0400 Received: from mail005.syd.optusnet.com.au ([211.29.132.54]:5060 "EHLO mail005.syd.optusnet.com.au") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263019AbUEaNds convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 31 May 2004 09:33:48 -0400 From: Con Kolivas To: "Tvrtko A. =?utf-8?q?Ur=C5=A1ulin?=" Subject: Re: MM patches (was Re: why swap at all?) Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 23:33:43 +1000 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.1 Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Nick Piggin References: <40B84C85.8010207@yahoo.com.au> <200405311513.32930.tvrtko.ursulin@zg.htnet.hr> In-Reply-To: <200405311513.32930.tvrtko.ursulin@zg.htnet.hr> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Message-Id: <200405312333.43188.kernel@kolivas.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 31 May 2004 23:13, Tvrtko A. Uršulin wrote: > On Saturday 29 May 2004 10:40, Nick Piggin wrote: > > It is a cocktail of cleanups, simplification, and enhancements. The > > main ones that applie here is my split active lists patch (search > > archives for details), and explicit use-once logic. > > I didn't have time to personally test it but just want to share some > thoughts. This kind of improvement is absolutely necessary for 2.6 to be > usefull on the desktop. It continues to escape me how come that this kind > of, almost, bugfix arrives so late during stable period. > > Unfortunately it doesn't apply on top of Con's autoregulate swappines (AM > from now on) which I am currently testing. AM also does an excellent job in > preventing swap trashing while doing a lot of filesystem reading. > > I am curious on how does your patch technically relates to Con's AM, and is > it possible to merge the two? I know that they do their job on completely > different ways, so the real question would be: Is there a need for > something like AM if using your patch, or it completely obsoletes it? I had a quick look at Nick's patches to see for you and it appears that Nick's work completely removes the swappiness dial and introduces a different metric called vm_mapped_page_cost which is not interchangeable with the swappiness value. ie they cannot work together, sorry. Con