Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Add a feature to drop caches selectively

From: Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind1@gmail.com>
To: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Thomas Knauth <thomas.knauth@gmx.de>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>,
	Maksym Planeta <mcsim.planeta@gmail.com>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Add a feature to drop caches selectively
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 09:13:19 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1403763199.20275.39.camel@sauron.fi.intel.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20140626010606.GT4453@dastard>

On Thu, 2014-06-26 at 11:06 +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> Your particular use case can be handled by directing your benchmark
> at a filesystem mount point and unmounting the filesystem in between 
> benchmark runs. There is no ned to adding kernel functionality for
> somethign that can be so easily acheived by other means, especially
> in benchmark environments where *everything* is tightly controlled.

If I was a benchmark writer, I would not be willing running it as root
to be able to mount/unmount, I would not be willing to require the
customer creating special dedicated partitions for the benchmark,
because this is too user-unfriendly. Or do I make incorrect assumptions?

Not that I need this syscall and trying to sell the idea to anyone, just
trying to understand the alternative you suggested.

-- 
Best Regards,
Artem Bityutskiy