Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:06:49 +1000 | From | Nick Piggin <> | Subject | Re: [ck] Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23 |
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Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> Nick > has been talking about 'fixing the updatedb thing' for years now, no patch > yet.
Wrong Nick, I think.
First I heard about the updatedb problem was a few months ago with people saying updatedb was causing their system to swap (that is, swap prefetching helped after updatedb). I haven't been able to even try to fix it because I can't reproduce it (I'm sitting on a machine with 256MB RAM), and nobody has wanted to help me.
> Besides, he won't fix OO.o nor all other userspace stuff - so > actually, > he does NOT even promise an alternative. Not that I think fixing updatedb > would be cool, btw - it sure would, but it's no reason not to include swap > prefetch - it's mostly unrelated. > > I think everyone with >1 gb ram should stop saying 'I don't need it' > because > that's obvious for that hardware. Just like ppl having a dual- or quadcore > shouldn't even talk about scheduler interactivity stuff...
Actually there are people with >1GB of ram who are saying it helps. Why do you want to shut people out of the discussion?
> Desktop users want it, tests show it works, there is no alternative and the > maybe-promised-one won't even fix all cornercases. It's small, mostly > selfcontained. There is a maintainer. It's been stable for a long time. > It's > been in MM for a long time. > > Yet it doesn't make it. Andrew says 'some ppl have objections' (he means > Nick) and he doesn't see an advantage in it (at least 4 gig ram, right, > Andrew?). > > Do I miss things?
You could try constructively contributing?
> Apparently, it didn't get in yet - and I find it hard to believe Andrew > holds swapprefetch for reasons like the above. So it must be something > else. > > > Nick is saying tests have already proven swap prefetch to be helpfull, > that's not the problem. He calls the requirements to get in 'fuzzy'. OK.
The test I have seen is the one that forces a huge amount of memory to swap out, waits, then touches it. That speeds up, and that's fine. That's a good sanity test to ensure it is working. Beyond that there are other considerations to getting something merged.
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