Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 28 Jul 2002 02:55:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 28 Jul 2002 02:55:21 -0400 Received: from twilight.cs.hut.fi ([130.233.40.5]:13130 "EHLO twilight.cs.hut.fi") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 28 Jul 2002 02:55:20 -0400 Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 09:58:33 +0300 From: Ville Herva To: Buddy Lumpkin Cc: Linux-kernel Subject: Re: About the need of a swap area Message-ID: <20020728065830.GT1465@niksula.cs.hut.fi> Mail-Followup-To: Ville Herva , Buddy Lumpkin , Linux-kernel References: <1027813211.21516.2.camel@irongate.swansea.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.25i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 979 Lines: 23 On Sat, Jul 27, 2002 at 03:39:41PM -0700, you [Buddy Lumpkin] wrote: > > Why would you want to push *anything* to swap until you have to? If you have idle io time in your hands, you can choose to back up some dirty anonymous pages to the swap device. This way, when pages really needs to get freed, you can just drop the pages (just like you would drop clean file backed pages.) This obviously eliminates a great latency (somebody said something about a "swap storm"), because the write happened beforehand. There's nothing wrong with the swap being in use (and the pages may still be in memory). If you have swap, it makes sense to use it. What doesn't make sense is to waste time waiting for paging to happen. -- v -- v@iki.fi - 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/