Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 28 Jun 2005 22:17:04 +0200 | From | Jörn Engel <> | Subject | Re: wrong madvise(MADV_DONTNEED) semantic |
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On Tue, 28 June 2005 16:05:11 -0400, Robert Love wrote: > > I like the idea (I think someone suggested this early on) of renaming > the current MADV_DONTNEED to MADV_FREE and then adding a correct > MADV_DONTNEED.
Imo, that's still a crime against common sense. Madvice should give the kernel some advice about which data to keep or not to keep in memory, hence the name. It should *not* tell the kernel to corrupt data, which currently appears to be the case.
If the application knows 100% that it is the _only_ possible user of this data and will never again use it, dropping dirty pages might be a sane option. Effectively that translates to anonymous memory only. In all other cases, dirty pages should be written back.
> And, as I said, the man page needs clarification.
Definitely.
Jörn
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