linux-kernel - Re: RFT: updatedb "morning after" problem [was: Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23]

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Message-Id: <200707281136.44276.dhazelton@enter.net>
Date:	Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:36:43 -0400
From:	Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@...er.net>
To:	Mike Galbraith <efault@....de>
Cc:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Frank Kingswood <frank@...gswood-consulting.co.uk>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	Ray Lee <ray-lk@...rabbit.org>,
	Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@...il.com>,
	ck list <ck@....kolivas.org>, Paul Jackson <pj@....com>,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: RFT: updatedb "morning after" problem [was: Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23]

On Saturday 28 July 2007 03:48:13 Mike Galbraith wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-27 at 18:51 -0400, Daniel Hazelton wrote:
> > Now, once more, I'm going to ask: What is so terribly wrong with swap
> > prefetch? Why does it seem that everyone against it says "Its treating a
> > symptom, so it can't go in"?
>
> And once again, I personally have nothing against swap-prefetch, or
> something like it. I can see how it or something like it could be made
> to improve the lives of people who get up in the morning to find their
> apps sitting on disk due to memory pressure generated by over-night
> system maintenance operations.
>
> The author himself however, says his implementation can't help with
> updatedb (though people seem to be saying that it does), or anything
> else that leaves memory full.  That IMHO, makes it of questionable value
> toward solving what people are saying they want swap-prefetch for in the
> first place.

Okay. I have to agree with the author that, in such a situation, it wouldn't 
help. However there are, without a doubt, other situations where it would 
help immensely. (memory hogs forcing everything to disk and quitting, one off 
tasks that don't balloon the cache (kernel compiles, et al) - in those 
situations swap prefetch would really shine.)

DRH

-- 
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