Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265071AbUD3GVj (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 02:21:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265081AbUD3GVj (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 02:21:39 -0400 Received: from c3p0.cc.swin.edu.au ([136.186.1.30]:61712 "EHLO swin.edu.au") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265071AbUD3GVh (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 02:21:37 -0400 To: Horst von Brand Cc: Nick Piggin , Jeff Garzik , Andrew Morton , brettspamacct@fastclick.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Tim Connors Subject: Re: ~500 megs cached yet 2.6.5 goes into swap hell In-reply-to: <200404292001.i3TK1BYe005147@eeyore.valparaiso.cl> References: <40904A84.2030307@yahoo.com.au> <200404292001.i3TK1BYe005147@eeyore.valparaiso.cl> X-Face: +*%dmR:3=9i\[:8fga\UgZT#@`f=DU0(wQqI'AR2/r0sBMO}Ax\,V*cWaW-owRlUmuz&=v\KItx0:gRCBg1&z_"4x&-N#Di7))]~p2('`6|5.c3&:Z?VLU`Zt5Kb,~uC6 Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:20:18 +1000 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1294 Lines: 29 Horst von Brand said on Thu, 29 Apr 2004 16:01:11 -0400: > Nick Piggin said: > > [...] > > > I don't know. What if you have some huge application that only > > runs once per day for 10 minutes? Do you want it to be consuming > > 100MB of your memory for the other 23 hours and 50 minutes for > > no good reason? > > How on earth is the kernel supposed to know that for this one particular > job you don't care if it takes 3 hours instead of 10 minutes, just because > you don't want to spare enough preciousss RAM? Note that we are not talking about having insufficient memory. In my case (2.4 kernel - ie, 2.6 with swapiness 0%) there is more than enough memory to contain all my working set - it's only because cache is too eager to claim memory that is otherwise in use that non-optimalities occur. -- TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ If I'd known computer science was going to be like this, I'd never have given up being a rock 'n' roll star. -- G. Hirst - 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/