Re: zswap: How to determine whether it is compressing swap pages?

From: Bob Liu
Date: Thu Jul 18 2013 - 08:43:57 EST


Hi Martin,

On 07/18/2013 03:38 AM, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 17. Juli 2013, 09:38:34 schrieb Seth Jennings:
>> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 01:41:44PM +0200, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
>>> Is there any way to run zcache concurrently with zswap? I.e. use zcache only
>>> for read caches for filesystem and zswap for swap?
>>
>> No, at least not with zcache's frontswap features enabled. frontswap is a very
>> simple API that allows only one "backend" to register with it at a time. So
>> that means _either_ zswap or zcache.
>>
>> The only way they can be used in a meaningful way together is to use the
>> "nofrontswap" zcache option in the kernel boot parameters to prevent
>> zcache overriding zswap's frontswap registration.
>>
>> But the general answer is no, they shouldn't be used together.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> What is better suited for swap? zswap or zcache?
>>
>> zswap targets the specific case of caching swapped out pages in a compressed
>> cache and this is much simpler than zcache. zswap is also in mainline as of
>> 3.11-rc1.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Okay, then I will test zswap for now. I have a nice use case for it: Playing

Could you make some test by kernel compiling? Something like kernbench.
During my testing, I found that the swap ins/outs operations reduced but
the kernel compile time didn't reduce accordingly.

--
Regards,
-Bob
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/