Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932954AbXKOVsf (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:48:35 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1764048AbXKOVs1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:48:27 -0500 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:33499 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1763777AbXKOVs0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:48:26 -0500 Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:47:54 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Peter Zijlstra cc: Bron Gondwana , Christian Kujau , Andrew Morton , Linux Kernel Mailing List , robm@fastmail.fm, riel , Anton Altaparmakov Subject: Re: mmap dirty limits on 32 bit kernels (Was: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs) In-Reply-To: <1195162015.22457.52.camel@lappy> Message-ID: References: <20071113.043207.44732743.davem@davemloft.net> <20071113110259.44c56d42.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20071113130411.26ccae12.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20071115040708.GB15302@brong.net> <20071115052538.GA21522@brong.net> <20071115115049.GA8297@brong.net> <1195155601.22457.25.camel@lappy> <1195159457.22457.35.camel@lappy> <1195162015.22457.52.camel@lappy> 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 Content-Length: 1666 Lines: 40 On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > But this problem is already an issue, Anton recently had a case where a > 12GB highmem box locked up due to NTFS running out of lowmem - or > something like that. Yeah. I always considered HIGHMEM to just be unusable. It's ok for extending to 2-4GB (ie HIGHMEM4G, not 64G), and it's probably borderline usable for 4-8G if you are careful. But quite frankly, I refuse to even care about anything past that. If you have 12G (or heaven forbid, even more) in your machine, and you can't be bothered to just upgrade to a 64-bit CPU, then quite frankly, *I* personally can't be bothered to care. That's my personal opinion, and I realize that some of the commercial vendors may care about their insane customers' satisfaction, but I'm simply not interested in insane users. If they have that much RAM (and bought it a few years ago when a 64-bit CPU wasn't an option), they can't be poor. So the _only_ explanation today for 12GB on a 32-bit machine is (a) insanity or (b) being so lazy as to not bother to upgrade and in either case, my personal reaction is "I'm *not* crazy, and yes, I'm lazy too, and I can't give a rats *ss about those problems". HIGHMEM was a mistake in the first place. It's one that we can live with, but I refuse to support it more than it needs to be supported. And 12GB is *way* past the end of what is worth supporting. 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/