linux-kernel - min_free_kbytes documentation, /proc/sys/vm docs

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:46:26 +0200
From:	Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>,
	kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Cc:	andrea@...e.de, npiggin@...e.de, peterz@...radead.org
Subject: min_free_kbytes documentation, /proc/sys/vm docs

Hi!

min_free_kbytes documentation says:

min_free_kbytes:

This is used to force the Linux VM to keep a minimum number 
of kilobytes free.  The VM uses this number to compute a pages_min
value for each lowmem zone in the system.  Each lowmem zone gets 
a number of reserved free pages based proportionally on its size.

...which is not too helpful :-(. In particular, should kernel survive
setting this to 0 and still work reliably? IOW is this
performance-only tweak, or does it correctness implications?

I guess it should also say something like "do not set this to more
than half of your physical RAM (or half of lowmem?) or you get an
instant OOM".

Plus, lowmem_reserve_ratio seems to be undocumented.
									Pavel
			(trying to come up with agressive settings, so
			that swap over ata over ethernet finally breaks).

-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/