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From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>,
	Stewart Smith <stewart@flamingspork.com>,
	linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [patch 1/2] mm: fincore()
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:54:56 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130217145456.375dab11.akpm@linux-foundation.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87621skhtc.fsf@rustcorp.com.au>

On Sat, 16 Feb 2013 14:53:43 +1030 Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> wrote:

> Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> writes:
> > On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:13:04 -0500
> > Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> wrote:
> >> I dunno.  The byte vector might not be optimal but its worst cases
> >> seem more attractive, is just as extensible, and dead simple to use.
> >
> > But I think "which pages from this 4TB file are in core" will not be an
> > uncommon usage, and writing a gig of memory to find three pages is just
> > awful.
> 
> Actually, I don't know of any usage for this call.

That's good news ;)

We shouldn't add it unless there's damn good reason.

> I'd really like to use it for backup programs, so they stop pulling
> random crap into memory (but leave things already resident).  But that
> needs to madvise(MADV_DONTNEED) on the page, so need mmap.
>
> So why not just use mincore?

One can use fadvise(POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED) to drop the pages.

Or toss your backup app into a small memcg so it reclaims its own
stuff.  See recent thread "mm: fadvise: Drain all pagevecs if
POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED fails to discard all pages"

  parent reply	other threads:[~2013-02-17 22:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-02-11  3:13 RFC: mincore: add a bit to indicate a page is dirty Rusty Russell
2013-02-11 16:27 ` Johannes Weiner
2013-02-11 22:12   ` Andrew Morton
2013-02-12  5:44     ` Rusty Russell
2013-02-15  6:34     ` [patch 1/2] mm: fincore() Johannes Weiner
2013-02-15 20:39       ` David Miller
2013-02-15 21:14       ` Andrew Morton
2013-02-15 22:28         ` Johannes Weiner
2013-02-15 22:34           ` Andrew Morton
2013-02-15 21:27       ` Andrew Morton
2013-02-15 23:13         ` Johannes Weiner
2013-02-15 23:42           ` Andrew Morton
2013-02-16  4:23             ` Rusty Russell
2013-02-17 22:51               ` Johannes Weiner
2013-02-17 22:54               ` Andrew Morton [this message]
2013-05-29 14:53               ` Andres Freund
2013-05-29 17:32                 ` Johannes Weiner
2013-05-29 17:52                   ` Andres Freund
2013-02-18  5:41             ` Rusty Russell
2013-02-19 10:25       ` Simon Jeons
2013-02-15  6:35     ` [patch 2/2] x86-64: hook up fincore() syscall Johannes Weiner
2013-02-12  5:49   ` RFC: mincore: add a bit to indicate a page is dirty Rusty Russell

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