Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262296AbTH3HdE (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Aug 2003 03:33:04 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263041AbTH3HdE (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Aug 2003 03:33:04 -0400 Received: from 224.Red-217-125-129.pooles.rima-tde.net ([217.125.129.224]:10737 "HELO cocodriloo.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S262296AbTH3Hc6 (ORCPT ); Sat, 30 Aug 2003 03:32:58 -0400 Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2003 07:01:11 +0200 From: Antonio Vargas To: Shantanu Goel Cc: Andrea Arcangeli , Antonio Vargas , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Marc-Christian Petersen Subject: Re: [VM PATCH] Faster reclamation of dirty pages and unused inode/dcache entries in 2.4.22 Message-ID: <20030830050111.GD640@wind.cocodriloo.com> References: <20030829195543.GD24409@dualathlon.random> <20030829202001.38031.qmail@web12807.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030829202001.38031.qmail@web12807.mail.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2624 Lines: 74 On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 01:20:01PM -0700, Shantanu Goel wrote: > Thanks for the pointer to the benchmarks. > > The patch I posted only helps the mmap case so it > won't help (or hurt hopefully ;-) any program that > primarily does read/write instead of mmap. The > extreme case where I observed this was a perl script > that created a gigantic hash and tried to populate it. I've experienced this workload and it's easily reproducible: get the lxr tools and try to build the indexes. > The perl in question uses mmap for malloc. The > difference in execution time between stock 2.4.22 and > one with the patch was insignificant because it is > primarily I/O bound, however the other apps I was > running, Mozilla and several xterm's, were paged out > much less frequently in the latter case. The machine > has 256MB of memory and perl grew to about 1 GB. > > I have written another patch that more aggresively > tries to free pages with dirty buffers which should > help with the buffer I/O case. It essentially changes > try_to_free_buffers() so it immediately starts and > waits for I/O to complete if the gfp_mask allows it. > It does not do any clustering so its performance is > questionable at the moment. > > --- Andrea Arcangeli wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 12:46:36PM -0700, Shantanu > > Goel wrote: > > > Andrea, > > > > > > I'll test and submit a patch against -aa. Also, > > is > > > there a common benchmark that you use to test for > > > regression? > > > > bonnie,tiobench,dbench would be a very good start > > for the basics (note: > > dbench can be misleading, but at the same fariness > > levels, it's > > interesting too, it's just that dbench doesn't > > measure the fariness > > level itself [like tiobench started doing relatively > > recently]). > > > > (I'm assuming the patch makes difference not only > > for mmapped dirty > > pages, in such case the above would be non > > interesting) > > > > thanks, > > > > Andrea > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software > http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com -- winden/network 1. Dado un programa, siempre tiene al menos un fallo. 2. Dadas varias lineas de codigo, siempre se pueden acortar a menos lineas. 3. Por induccion, todos los programas se pueden reducir a una linea que no funciona. - 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/