Re: Ongoing 2.4 VM suckage

Mike Black
2001-08-03T22:00:07Z

I floated this idea a while ago but didn't receive any comments (or
flames)...
Couldn't kswapd just gracefully back-off when it doesn't make any progress?
In my case (with ext3/raid5 and a tiobench test) kswapd NEVER actually swaps
anything out.
It just chews CPU time.
So...if kswapd just said "didn't make any progress...*2 last sleep" so it
would degrade itself.
Doesn't sound like a major rewrite to me.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rik van Riel" <riel@conectiva.com.br>
To: "David Ford" <david@blue-labs.org>
Cc: "Jeffrey W. Baker" <jwbaker@acm.org>; "Richard B. Johnson"
<root@chaos.analogic.com>; <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: Ongoing 2.4 VM suckage

> On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, David Ford wrote:
>
> > If it is that badly broken, isn't that sufficient criteria to justify
> > the patch?
>
> It's not just a patch. Fixing this problem will require
> a major VM rewrite. A rewrite I really wasn't willing
> to make for 2.4.
>
> I'll start writing the thing, but I won't be aiming at
> getting it included in 2.4. I guess I could code it in
> such a way to give a drop-in replacement for people
> willing to cut themselves on the bleeding edge, though ;)
>
> Rik
> --
> Virtual memory is like a game you can't win;
> However, without VM there's truly nothing to lose...
>
> http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/
>
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>
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