Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753658AbaFYGZu (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jun 2014 02:25:50 -0400 Received: from mga02.intel.com ([134.134.136.20]:22750 "EHLO mga02.intel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751415AbaFYGZt (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jun 2014 02:25:49 -0400 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.01,543,1400050800"; d="scan'208";a="563039882" Message-ID: <1403677528.7903.103.camel@sauron.fi.intel.com> Subject: Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Add a feature to drop caches selectively From: Artem Bityutskiy Reply-To: dedekind1@gmail.com To: David Rientjes Cc: Maksym Planeta , Alexander Viro , Thomas Knauth , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:25:28 +0300 In-Reply-To: References: <1403626213-7691-1-git-send-email-mcsim.planeta@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.10.4 (3.10.4-2.fc20) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 2014-06-24 at 14:59 -0700, David Rientjes wrote: > On Tue, 24 Jun 2014, Maksym Planeta wrote: > > > To clean the page cache one can use /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches. But this > > drops the whole page cache. In contrast to that sdrop_caches enables > > ability to drop the page cache selectively by path string. > > > > Suggested-by: Thomas Knauth > > Signed-off-by: Maksym Planeta > > Could you include some information in the commit message about why this is > useful? Specifically, why you want to drop pagecache only from a specific > path. > > The name of the sysctl is also quite non-descriptive. Plus some explanations WRT why proc-based interface and what would be the alternatives, what if tomorrow we want to extend the functionality and drop caches only for certain file range, is this only for regular files or also for directories, why posix_fadvice(DONTNEED) is not sufficient. -- Best Regards, Artem Bityutskiy -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/