On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 12:30:49AM +0200, Ingo Oeser wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 12:46:36PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > Actually, the _real_ answer is to make fs/block_dev.c use the page cache
> > instead - and generic_file_read() does read-ahead that actually improves
> > performance, unlike the silly contortions that the direct block-dev
> > read-ahead tries to do.
>
> If we had a paper about the page cache this would be easy.
>
> In the beginning page cache was just previously mmaped pages,
> that are clean and ready to be mapped again.
>
> Today we have them either dirty or clean, mapped or not(?), with and
> without buffers, in highmem(?) or lowmem and everybody and its
> children is using it for everything.
>
> We need a clear definition about (concurrent) states of page
> cached pages, valid transitions (and locks/sema4s to take for
> them), assumptions, guarantees etc.
>
> The only thing I see guaranteed, that every big thing to be
> cached should live there and is page aligned and page sized.
>
> I'm trying hard to understand a concept in the page cache and to
> get it's limits and guarantees, but still find it hard to get
> them.
>
> Time for specs, I would say ;-)
>
> I could help to explain and formulate, if someone could only cut
> the edges of how it works and what it will be.
>
> Thanks & Regards
>
> Ingo Oeser
> --
> Feel the power of the penguin - run linux@your.pc
> <esc>:x
> -
I hope we are not doing something stupid here, like breaking the
f*!%cking page cache again. I've finaly got all the bugs out of
NWFS on 2.4.0-test9, and have waded through the breakage of the
past two testX releases of 2.4.
Why do we need to disable read ahead on the page cache anyway?
:-)
Jeff
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 31 2000 - 21:00:14 EST