linux-kernel.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>
To: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>
Cc: lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [patch] adjustments to dirty memory thresholds
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 13:27:02 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <3D6D3216.D472CBC3@zip.com.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 20020828200857.GB888@holomorphy.com

William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 09:39:09PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > These ratios are scaled so that as the highmem:lowmem ratio goes
> > beyond 4:1, the maximum amount of allowed dirty memory ceases to
> > increase.  It is clamped at the amount of memory which a 4:1 machine
> > is allowed to use.
> 
> This is disturbing. I suspect this is only going to raise poor memory
> utilization issues on highmem boxen.

The intent is to fix them.  Allowing more than 2G of dirty data to
float about seems unreasonable, and it pins buffer_heads.

But hey.  The patch merely sets the initial value of /proc/sys/vm/dirty*,
and those things are writeable.

> Of course, "f**k highmem" is such
> a common refrain these days so that's probably falling on deaf ears.

On the contrary.

> AFAICT the OOM issues are largely a by-product of mempool allocations
> entering out_of_memory() when they have the perfectly reasonable
> alternative strategy of simply waiting for the mempool to refill.

I don't have enough RAM to reproduce this.  Please send
call traces up from out_of_memory().

  reply	other threads:[~2002-08-28 20:24 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2002-08-28  4:39 [patch] adjustments to dirty memory thresholds Andrew Morton
2002-08-28 20:08 ` William Lee Irwin III
2002-08-28 20:27   ` Andrew Morton [this message]
2002-08-28 21:42     ` William Lee Irwin III
2002-08-28 21:58       ` Andrew Morton
2002-08-28 22:15         ` Andrew Morton
2002-08-29  0:26         ` Rik van Riel
2002-08-29  2:10           ` Andrew Morton
2002-08-29  2:10             ` Rik van Riel
2002-08-29  2:52               ` Andrew Morton
2002-09-01  1:37                 ` William Lee Irwin III
2002-08-29  3:49         ` William Lee Irwin III
2002-08-29 12:37           ` Rik van Riel

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=3D6D3216.D472CBC3@zip.com.au \
    --to=akpm@zip.com.au \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=wli@holomorphy.com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).