linux-kernel - Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

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Message-ID: <20070725113401.GA23341@elte.hu>
Date:	Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:34:01 +0200
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
To:	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...il.com>
Cc:	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu, david@...g.hm,
	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	Ray Lee <ray-lk@...rabbit.org>,
	Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@...il.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	ck list <ck@....kolivas.org>, Paul Jackson <pj@....com>,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

* Rene Herman <rene.herman@...il.com> wrote:

> On 07/25/2007 10:28 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> >>Regardless, I'll stand by "[by disabling updatedb] the problem will 
> >>for a large part be solved" as I expect approximately 94.372 percent 
> >>of Linux desktop users couldn't care less about locate.
> >
> > i think that approach is illogical: because Linux mis-handled a 
> > mixed workload the answer is to ... remove a portion of that 
> > workload?
> 
> No. It got snipped but I introduced the comment by saying it was a 
> "that's not the point" kind of thing. [...]

ok - with that qualification i understand.

still, especially for someone like me who frequently deals with source 
code, 'locate' is indispensible.

and the fact is: updatedb discards a considerable portion of the cache 
completely unnecessarily: on a reasonably complex box no way do all the 
inodes and dentries fit into all of RAM, so we just trash everything. 
Maybe the kernel could be extended with a method of opening files in a 
'drop from the dcache after use' way. (beagled and backup tools could 
make use of that facility too.) (Or some other sort of 
file-cache-invalidation syscall that already exist, which would _also_ 
result in the immediate zapping of the dentry+inode from the dcache.)

	Ingo
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