Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263020AbUD2DNM (ORCPT ); Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:13:12 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263100AbUD2DMJ (ORCPT ); Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:12:09 -0400 Received: from florence.buici.com ([206.124.142.26]:40838 "HELO florence.buici.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S263020AbUD2DLB (ORCPT ); Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:11:01 -0400 Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 20:10:59 -0700 From: Marc Singer To: Andrew Morton Cc: riel@redhat.com, brettspamacct@fastclick.com, jgarzik@pobox.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: ~500 megs cached yet 2.6.5 goes into swap hell Message-ID: <20040429031059.GA26060@buici.com> References: <20040428180038.73a38683.akpm@osdl.org> <20040428185720.07a3da4d.akpm@osdl.org> <20040429022944.GA24000@buici.com> <20040428193541.1e2cf489.akpm@osdl.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040428193541.1e2cf489.akpm@osdl.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1368 Lines: 30 On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 07:35:41PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > Marc Singer wrote: > > > > On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 06:57:20PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > Rik van Riel wrote: > > > > > > > > IMHO, the VM on a desktop system really should be optimised to > > > > have the best interactive behaviour, meaning decent latency > > > > when switching applications. > > > > > > I'm gonna stick my fingers in my ears and sing "la la la" until people tell > > > me "I set swappiness to zero and it didn't do what I wanted it to do". > > > > It does, but it's a bit too coarse of a solution. It just means that > > the page cache always loses. > > That's what people have been asking for. What are you suggesting should > happen instead? I'm thinking that the problem is that the page cache is greedier that most people expect. For example, if I could hold the page cache to be under a specific size, then I could do some performance measurements. E.g, compile kernel with a 768K page cache, 512K, 256K and 128K. On a machine with loads of RAM, where's the optimal page cache size? - 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/