From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1031147AbXDSEoV (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:44:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1031154AbXDSEoV (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:44:21 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:52625 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1031147AbXDSEoU (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:44:20 -0400 Message-ID: <4626F038.8020606@redhat.com> Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:29:44 -0400 From: Rik van Riel Organization: Red Hat, Inc User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20061008) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Abhijit Bhopatkar CC: Linux Kernel list , Linus Torvalds , akpm@osdl.org, jgarzik@pobox.com, Chris Snook Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] Throttle swappiness for interactive tasks References: <2ff216280704180510w28136a6cw6816f834593aff13@mail.gmail.com> <46268519.7080702@redhat.com> <2ff216280704182014h6ff2eed3g4301ee8d1bfbed14@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <2ff216280704182014h6ff2eed3g4301ee8d1bfbed14@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Abhijit Bhopatkar wrote: > I just wanted to know weather its worth going forward or we have > better reasons to discount any such direction? The reason that the wrong pages get swapped out sometimes could be due to a side effect of the way the swappiness policy is implemented. While the VM only reclaims page cache pages, it will still rotate through the anonymous pages on the LRU list, which effectively randomizes the order of those pages on the list. I need to get back to benchmarking my patch to split the lists - anonymous and other swap backed pages on one set of pageout lists, filesystem backed pages on another list. One report I got was that the system is more interactive under very heavy load, and my desktop system at the office seems to behave better than it used to when I get back to it after a few days. Unfortunately my main desktop system at home depends on Xen, so it's not as easy to use that patch there :( -- Politics is the struggle between those who want to make their country the best in the world, and those who believe it already is. Each group calls the other unpatriotic.