From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Graham, Simon" Subject: RE: Reducing impact of save/restore/dump on Dom0 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 14:21:57 -0500 Message-ID: <342BAC0A5467384983B586A6B0B3767104A69C4E@EXNA.corp.stratus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Content-class: urn:content-classes:message List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com To: Iustin Pop Cc: xen-devel@lists.xensource.com List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org > Yes, that's more or less expected. I've used 10% (you can't go below 5% > =3D harcoded limit in the kernel) and then, for a 512MB dom0, only ~25 MB > of cache will be used. I would hardly say that 25MB is too much. >=20 Well, I think it means only 25MB of dirty cache is allowed before writes become synchronous - you will still use all of memory for the cache, it will just be cleaned earlier and therefore available for reuse plus the penalty for the write moves to the writer rather than to everyone else... Still, I agree it's worth experimenting with (and I intend to). > > I still feel that dump/save/restore files really don't belong in the > > system cache at all since they just pollute the cache for no ggood > > reason. >=20 > Then there is also posix_fadvise, which is more or less what you need > to > use in case you worry about your cache. I haven't used it, but I've > heard from people that using fadvise with POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED+fsync or > O_SYNC in batches can reduce your cache usage. >=20 > Just a few thoughts, as these don't change the way you do writes, as > opposed to O_DIRECT. I certainly would prefer this too; I hadn't considered using POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED/fsync in the loop... Thanks for the suggestions, Simon