Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

[Nick Piggin]

Andrew Morton wrote:

> All this would end up needing runtime configurability and tweakability and
> customisability.  All standard fare for userspace stuff - much easier than
> patching the kernel.
>
>
> So.  We can
>
> a) provide a way for userspace to reload pagecache and
>
> b) merge maps2 (once it's finished) (pokes mpm)
>
> and we're done?


The userspace solution has been brought up before. It could be a good way
to go. I was thinking about how to do refetching of file backed pages from
the kernel, and it isn't impossible, but it it seems like locking would be
quite hard and it would be pretty complex and inflexible compared to a
userspace solution. Userspace might know what to chuck out, what to keep,
what access patterns to use...

Not that I want to say anything about swap prefetch getting merged: my
inbox is already full of enough "helpful suggestions" about that, so I'll
just be happy to have a look at little things like updatedb.

--
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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