Re: Autotune swappiness01

[Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1990 bytes --]

R. J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Monday 26 of July 2004 12:29, Con Kolivas wrote:
> 
>>R. J. Wysocki wrote:
>>
>>>On Monday 26 of July 2004 11:31, Con Kolivas wrote:
>>>
>>>>R. J. Wysocki wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On Monday 26 of July 2004 03:09, Con Kolivas wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Con Kolivas writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Andrew Morton writes:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Seriously, we've seen placebo effects before...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I am in full agreement there... It's easy to see that applications do
>>>>>>>not swap out overnight; but i'm having difficulty trying to find a way
>>>>>>>to demonstrate the other part. I guess timing the "linking the kernel
>>>>>>>with full debug" on a low memory box is measurable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I should have said - finding a swappiness that ensures not swapping out
>>>>>>applications with updatedb, then using that same swappiness value to do
>>>>>>the linking test.
>>>>>
>>>>>Please excuse me, but is that viable at all?  IMHO, it's just like
>>>>>trying to tune a radio including volume with only one knob.  I don't
>>>>>say it won't work, but the probability that it will is rather small, it
>>>>>seems ...
>>>>
>>>>Well that's what we want. I cant remember other desktop operating
>>>>systems setting a root only control between night and day, or between
>>>>copying ISOs and running applications or...
>>>
>>>I agree, but isn't it related to the fact that other desktop OSes usually
>>>don't run anything like updatedb nightly?
>>>
>>>Perhaps we need a bit more sophisticated swap algorithm than other OSes
>>>do. For example, couldn't we add an additional parameter to control the
>>>swapping "behavior", apart from the swappiness?  Something like adding
>>>the second knob in my radio example?  Just thinking,
>>
>>I think one knob is one knob too many already.
> 
> 
> Can you please tell me why do you think so?

If you wanna discuss pedantics...

In my ideal, nonsensical, impossible to obtain world we have an 
autoregulating operating system that doesn't need any knobs.

Con

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 256 bytes --]