Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261278AbVANSQ2 (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:16:28 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261279AbVANSQ1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:16:27 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:7072 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261278AbVANSPz (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:15:55 -0500 Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:15:32 -0800 From: Andrew Morton To: Tim Schmielau Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: swapspace layout improvements advocacy Message-Id: <20050114101532.3a855a04.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: References: <20050112123524.GA12843@lnx-holt.americas.sgi.com> <20050112105315.2ac21173.akpm@osdl.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1554 Lines: 33 Tim Schmielau wrote: > > I recently found out that 2.6 kernels degrade horribly when going into > swap. On my dual PIII-850 with as little as 256 mb ram, I can easily > demonstrate that by opening about 40-50 instances of konquerer with large > tables, many images and such things. When the machine is into 80-120 mb of > the 256 mb swap partition, it becomes almost unusable. Even the desktop > background picture needs ~20sec to update, not to talk about any windows' > contents. And you can literally hear the reason for it: the harddisk is > seeking like crazy. > > I've applied Ingo Molnars swapspace-layout-improvements-2.6.9-rc1-bk12-A1 > port of the patch to a 2.6.11-rc1 kernel, and it handles the same workload > much smoother. It's slow, but you can work with it. Well I'm surprised. I ran a couple of silly tests and wasn't able to demonstrate any benefit. But I didn't persist at all due to general inbox overload :( > I just wonder why noone else complained yet. They're all too polite? > Are systems with tight memory constraints so uncommon these days? Relatively, but I think we do have some fairly technical people on this list who push their systems that hard, which is appreciated. I'll add the patch to the -mm lineup for a while.. - 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/