Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760589AbZJIMab (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Oct 2009 08:30:31 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755407AbZJIMaa (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Oct 2009 08:30:30 -0400 Received: from brick.kernel.dk ([93.163.65.50]:46210 "EHLO kernel.dk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750772AbZJIMa3 (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Oct 2009 08:30:29 -0400 Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:29:52 +0200 From: Jens Axboe To: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Ehrhardt Christian , linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Martin Schwidefsky , Wu Fengguang Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: make VM_MAX_READAHEAD configurable Message-ID: <20091009122952.GI9228@kernel.dk> References: <1255087175-21200-1-git-send-email-ehrhardt@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <1255090830.8802.60.camel@laptop> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1255090830.8802.60.camel@laptop> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1650 Lines: 36 On Fri, Oct 09 2009, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > On Fri, 2009-10-09 at 13:19 +0200, Ehrhardt Christian wrote: > > From: Christian Ehrhardt > > > > On one hand the define VM_MAX_READAHEAD in include/linux/mm.h is just a default > > and can be configured per block device queue. > > On the other hand a lot of admins do not use it, therefore it is reasonable to > > set a wise default. > > > > This path allows to configure the value via Kconfig mechanisms and therefore > > allow the assignment of different defaults dependent on other Kconfig symbols. > > > > Using this, the patch increases the default max readahead for s390 improving > > sequential throughput in a lot of scenarios with almost no drawbacks (only > > theoretical workloads with a lot concurrent sequential read patterns on a very > > low memory system suffer due to page cache trashing as expected). > > Why can't this be solved in userspace? > > Also, can't we simply raise this number if appropriate? Wu did some > read-ahead trashing detection bits a long while back which should scale > the read-ahead window back when we're low on memory, not sure that ever > made it in, but that sounds like a better option than having different > magic numbers for each platform. Agree, making this a config option (and even defaulting to a different number because of an arch setting) is crazy. -- Jens Axboe -- 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/