Re: [ext3][kernels >= 2.6.20.7 at least] KDE going comatose when FS is under heavy write load (massive starvation)

Marko Macek
2007-04-27T19:45:43Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, John Anthony Kazos Jr. wrote:
>> Could[/should] this stuff be changed from ratios to amounts? Or a quick
>> boot-time test to use a ratio if the memory is small and an amount (like
>> tax brackets, I would expect) if it's great?
>
> Yes, the "percentage" thing was likely wrong. That said, there *is* some
> correlation between "lots of memory" and "high-end machine", and that in
> turn tends to correlate with "fast disk", so I don't think the percentage
> approach is really *horribly* wrong.
>
> The main issue with the percentage is that we do export them as such
> through the /proc/ interface, and they are easy to change and understand.
> So changing them to amounts is non-trivial if you also want to support the
> old interfaces - and the advantage isn't obvious enough that it's a
> clear-cut case.

I wonder if it would be useful if the limit was 'data we can write out
in 1 (configurable) second. This would typically mean either one 50mb
(depending on disk) contigous block or 100-200 scattered blocks (since
the typical disk latency is about 5-10ms).

Has anyone tried something like this?

Mark