From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261233AbVF1KvP (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:51:15 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261257AbVF1KvP (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:51:15 -0400 Received: from 41-052.adsl.zetnet.co.uk ([194.247.41.52]:1042 "EHLO mail.esperi.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261233AbVF1KvN (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:51:13 -0400 To: "Al Boldi" Cc: "'Marcelo Tosatti'" , Subject: Re: Kswapd flaw References: <200506280637.JAA07333@raad.intranet> From: Nix X-Emacs: there's a reason it comes with a built-in psychotherapist. Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:50:49 +0100 In-Reply-To: <200506280637.JAA07333@raad.intranet> (Al Boldi's message of "28 Jun 2005 07:47:44 +0100") Message-ID: <87r7em69h2.fsf@amaterasu.srvr.nix> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) XEmacs/21.4 (Corporate Culture, linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 28 Jun 2005, Al Boldi murmured woefully: > Kswapd starts evicting processes to fullfil a malloc, when it should just > deny it because there is no swap. This is how the kernel has always worked. If you have no swap, memory pressure is higher than it otherwise might be, because dirty pages must be kept in physical RAM even if they are rarely used. So when memory gets low the kernel *has* to evict pages which aren't dirty, and write out and flush dirty pages corresponding to files on disk. What else could it possibly do? Stop evicting everything? I can't even tell what you're expecting. Surely not that no pages are ever evicted or flushed; your memory would fill up with page cache in no time. -- `I lost interest in "blade servers" when I found they didn't throw knives at people who weren't supposed to be in your machine room.' --- Anthony de Boer