Re: madvise(2) MADV_SEQUENTIAL behavior

[Chris Snook]

Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:14:29 +1000
> Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > It might encourage user space applications to start using
> > > FADV_SEQUENTIAL or FADV_NOREUSE more often (as it would become
> > > worthwhile to do so), and if they do (especially cron jobs), the problem
> > > of the slow desktop in the morning would progressively solve itself.
> > The slow desktop in the morning should not happen even without such a
> > call, because the kernel should not throw out frequently used data (even
> > if it is not quite so recent) in favour of streaming data.
> >
> > OK, I figure it doesn't do such a good job now, which is sad, 
>
> Do you have any tests in mind that we could use to decide
> whether the patch I posted Tuesday would do a decent job
> at protecting frequently used data from streaming data?
>
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/15/465

1) start up a memory-hogging Java app
2) run a full-system backup

If it works well, the Java app shouldn't slow down much.

-- Chris
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