Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:00:54 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:00:44 -0400 Received: from neon-gw.transmeta.com ([209.10.217.66]:25613 "EHLO neon-gw.transmeta.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:00:35 -0400 Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:59:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Daniel Phillips cc: Marcelo Tosatti , lkml , Rik van Riel Subject: Re: Inclusion of zoned inactive/free shortage patch In-Reply-To: <0107190057100H.12129@starship> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Daniel Phillips wrote: > > I don't really see much use for inactive_shortage_total() by itself, > except maybe deciding when to scan vs sitting idle. Absolutely. But that's an important decision in itself. Getting that decision wrong means that we either scan too little (and which point the question of per-zone shortages becomes moot, because by the time we start scanning we're too deep in trouble to be able to do a good gradual job anyway). Or we scan too much, and then the per-zone shortage just means that we'll always have so much inactive stuff in all the zones that we'll continue scanning forever - because none of the zones (correctly) feel that they have any reason to actually free anything. So the global inactive_shortage() decision is certainly an important one: it should trigger early enough to matter, but not so early that we trigger it even when most local zones are really totally saturated and we really shouldn't be scanning at all. Linus - 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/