Re: Linux 2.6.29

Linus Torvalds
2009-03-27T00:31:06Z

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> userspace can do it quite easily. Run a self-tuning script after
> installation and when the disk hardware changes significantly.

Uhhuh.

"user space can do it".

That's the global cop-out.

The fact is, user-space isn't doing it, and never has done anything even
_remotely_ like it.

In fact, I claim that it's impossible to do. If you give me a number for
the throughput of your harddisk, I will laugh in your face and call you a
moron.

Why? Because no such number exists. It depends on the access patterns. If
you write one large file, the number will be very different (and not just
by a few percent) from the numbers of you writing thousands of small
files, or re-writing a large database in random order.

So no. User space CAN NOT DO IT, and the fact that you even claim
something like that shows a distinct lack of thought.

> Maybe we should set the tunables to 99.9% to make it suck enough to
> motivate someone.

The only times tunables have worked for us is when they auto-tune.

IOW, we don't have "use 35% of memory for buffer cache" tunables, we just
dynamically auto-tune memory use. And no, we don't expect user space to
run some "tuning program for their load" either.

Linus