Re: Autotune swappiness01

From: R. J. Wysocki
Date: Mon Jul 26 2004 - 05:45:36 EST


On Monday 26 of July 2004 12:29, Con Kolivas wrote:
> R. J. Wysocki wrote:
> > On Monday 26 of July 2004 11:31, Con Kolivas wrote:
> >>R. J. Wysocki wrote:
> >>>On Monday 26 of July 2004 03:09, Con Kolivas wrote:
> >>>>Con Kolivas writes:
> >>>>>Andrew Morton writes:
> >>>>>>Seriously, we've seen placebo effects before...
> >>>>>
> >>>>>I am in full agreement there... It's easy to see that applications do
> >>>>>not swap out overnight; but i'm having difficulty trying to find a way
> >>>>>to demonstrate the other part. I guess timing the "linking the kernel
> >>>>>with full debug" on a low memory box is measurable.
> >>>>
> >>>>I should have said - finding a swappiness that ensures not swapping out
> >>>>applications with updatedb, then using that same swappiness value to do
> >>>>the linking test.
> >>>
> >>>Please excuse me, but is that viable at all? IMHO, it's just like
> >>> trying to tune a radio including volume with only one knob. I don't
> >>> say it won't work, but the probability that it will is rather small, it
> >>> seems ...
> >>
> >>Well that's what we want. I cant remember other desktop operating
> >>systems setting a root only control between night and day, or between
> >>copying ISOs and running applications or...
> >
> > I agree, but isn't it related to the fact that other desktop OSes usually
> > don't run anything like updatedb nightly?
> >
> > Perhaps we need a bit more sophisticated swap algorithm than other OSes
> > do. For example, couldn't we add an additional parameter to control the
> > swapping "behavior", apart from the swappiness? Something like adding
> > the second knob in my radio example? Just thinking,
>
> I think one knob is one knob too many already.

Can you please tell me why do you think so?

rjw

--
Rafael J. Wysocki
[tel. (+48) 605 053 693]
----------------------------
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
-- Richard P. Feynman
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