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From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Tim Schmielau <tim@physik3.uni-rostock.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: swapspace layout improvements advocacy
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:15:32 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20050114101532.3a855a04.akpm@osdl.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0501141433000.7044@gockel.physik3.uni-rostock.de>

Tim Schmielau <tim@physik3.uni-rostock.de> wrote:
>
> I recently found out that 2.6 kernels degrade horribly when going into 
>  swap. On my dual PIII-850 with as little as 256 mb ram, I can easily 
>  demonstrate that by opening about 40-50 instances of konquerer with large 
>  tables, many images and such things. When the machine is into 80-120 mb of 
>  the 256 mb swap partition, it becomes almost unusable. Even the desktop 
>  background picture needs ~20sec to update, not to talk about any windows' 
>  contents. And you can literally hear the reason for it: the harddisk is 
>  seeking like crazy.
> 
>  I've applied Ingo Molnars swapspace-layout-improvements-2.6.9-rc1-bk12-A1
>  port of the patch to a 2.6.11-rc1 kernel, and it handles the same workload 
>  much smoother. It's slow, but you can work with it.

Well I'm surprised.  I ran a couple of silly tests and wasn't able to
demonstrate any benefit.  But I didn't persist at all due to general inbox
overload :(

>  I just wonder why noone else complained yet.

They're all too polite?

> Are systems with tight memory constraints so uncommon these days?

Relatively, but I think we do have some fairly technical people on this
list who push their systems that hard, which is appreciated.  I'll add the
patch to the -mm lineup for a while..

  reply	other threads:[~2005-01-14 18:16 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2005-01-05  0:32 page migration patchset Ray Bryant
2005-01-05  2:07 ` Andi Kleen
2005-01-05  3:20   ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-05 18:41     ` Steve Longerbeam
2005-01-05 19:23       ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-05 23:00         ` Steve Longerbeam
2005-01-05 23:16           ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-05 20:55       ` Hugh Dickins
     [not found]         ` <41DC7EAD.8010407@mvista.com>
2005-01-06 14:43           ` Andi Kleen
2005-01-06 16:00             ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-06 17:50               ` Christoph Lameter
2005-01-06 19:29                 ` Andi Kleen
2005-01-06 22:30             ` William Lee Irwin III
2005-01-06 23:08               ` Andrew Morton
2005-01-06 23:15                 ` William Lee Irwin III
2005-01-06 23:21               ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-06 23:35                 ` William Lee Irwin III
2005-01-06 23:53               ` Anton Blanchard
2005-01-07  0:06                 ` William Lee Irwin III
2005-01-07  0:31                 ` Andi Kleen
2005-01-06 23:43             ` Steve Longerbeam
2005-01-06 23:58               ` William Lee Irwin III
2005-01-11 15:38       ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-11 19:00         ` Steve Longerbeam
2005-01-11 19:30           ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-11 20:59             ` Steve Longerbeam
2005-01-12 12:35         ` Robin Holt
2005-01-12 18:12           ` Hugh Dickins
2005-01-12 18:45             ` Ray Bryant
2005-01-12 18:53             ` Andrew Morton
2005-01-14 13:55               ` swapspace layout improvements advocacy Tim Schmielau
2005-01-14 18:15                 ` Andrew Morton [this message]
2005-01-14 22:52                 ` Barry K. Nathan
2005-01-15  0:33                   ` Alan Cox
2005-01-15  2:26                   ` Tim Schmielau
2005-01-15  8:55                   ` Pasi Savolainen

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