linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] tmpfs: add the option to disable swap

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Date:   Tue, 18 Apr 2023 13:55:58 -0700
From:   Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@...nel.org>
To:     Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>
Cc:     akpm@...ux-foundation.org, willy@...radead.org, brauner@...nel.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, p.raghav@...sung.com, da.gomez@...sung.com,
        a.manzanares@...sung.com, dave@...olabs.net, yosryahmed@...gle.com,
        keescook@...omium.org, patches@...ts.linux.dev,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] tmpfs: add the option to disable swap

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 09:31:20PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Mar 2023, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> 
> > I'm doing this work as part of future experimentation with tmpfs and the
> > page cache, but given a common complaint found about tmpfs is the
> > innability to work without the page cache I figured this might be useful
> > to others. It turns out it is -- at least Christian Brauner indicates
> > systemd uses ramfs for a few use-cases because they don't want to use
> > swap and so having this option would let them move over to using tmpfs
> > for those small use cases, see systemd-creds(1).
> 
> Thanks for your thorough work on tmpfs "noswap": seems well-received
> by quite a few others, that's good.
> 
> I've just a few comments on later patches (I don't understand why you
> went into those little rearrangements at the start of shmem_writepage(),
> but they seem harmless so I don't object),

Because the devil is in the details as you noted too!

> but wanted to ask here:
> 
> You say "a common complaint about tmpfs is the inability to work without
> the page cache".  Ehh?

That was a mistake! s/page cache/swap.

  Luis