linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] Limit the size of the pagecache

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Message-ID: <45B6CBD9.80600@yahoo.com.au>
Date:	Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:00:41 +1100
From:	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>
To:	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>
CC:	Aubrey Li <aubreylee@...il.com>,
	Vaidyanathan Srinivasan <svaidy@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Robin Getz <rgetz@...ckfin.uclinux.org>,
	"Henn, erich, Michael" <Michael.Hennerich@...log.com>,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] Limit the size of the pagecache

Christoph Lameter wrote:
> This is a patch using some of Aubrey's work plugging it in what is IMHO 
> the right way. Feel free to improve on it. I have gotten repeatedly 
> requests to be able to limit the pagecache. With the revised VM statistics 
> this is now actually possile. I'd like to know more about possible uses of 
> such a feature.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It may be useful to limit the size of the page cache for various reasons
> such as
> 
> 1. Insure that anonymous pages that may contain performance
>    critical data is never subject to swap.
> 
> 2. Insure rapid turnaround of pages in the cache.

So if these two aren't working properly at 100%, then I want to know the
reason why. Or at least see what the workload and the numbers look like.

> 
> 3. Reserve memory for other uses? (Aubrey?)

Maybe. This is still a bad hack, and I don't like to legitimise such use
though. I hope Aubrey isn't relying on this alone for his device to work
because his customers might end up hitting fragmentation problems sooner
or later.

-- 
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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