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

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Date:	Wed, 25 Jul 2007 01:30:49 -0400
From:	Eric St-Laurent <ericstl34@...patico.ca>
To:	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...il.com>
Cc:	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>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Paul Jackson <pj@....com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

On Wed, 2007-25-07 at 06:55 +0200, Rene Herman wrote:

> It certainly doesn't run for me ever. Always kind of a "that's not the 
> point" comment but I just keep wondering whenever I see anyone complain 
> about updatedb why the _hell_ they are running it in the first place. If 
> anyone who never uses "locate" for anything simply disable updatedb, the 
> problem will for a large part be solved.
> 
> This not just meant as a cheap comment; while I can think of a few similar 
> loads even on the desktop (scanning a browser cache, a media player indexing 
> a large amount of media files, ...) I've never heard of problems _other_ 
> than updatedb. So just junk that crap and be happy.

>>From my POV there's two different problems discussed recently:

- updatedb type of workloads that add tons of inodes and dentries in the
slab caches which of course use the pagecache.

- streaming large files (read or copying) that fill the pagecache with
useless used-once data

swap prefetch fix the first case, drop-behind fix the second case.

Both have the same symptoms but the cause is different.

Personally updatedb doesn't really hurt me.  But I don't have that many
files on my desktop.  I've tried the swap prefetch patch in the past and
it was not so noticeable for me. (I don't doubt it's helpful for others)

But every time I read or copy a large file around (usually from a
server) the slowdown is noticeable for some moments.

I just wanted to point this out, if it wasn't clean enough for everyone.
I hope both problems get fixed.


Best regards,

- Eric


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