linux-kernel.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: "Artem S. Tashkinov" <t.artem@lycos.com>
Cc: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Disabling in-memory write cache for x86-64 in Linux II
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:43:36 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CA+55aFxhJUrqdvw1To=9KLdxhYAOVwZLLeJT5yMRY5BT1weuHA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1814253454.3449.1382689853825.JavaMail.mail@webmail07>

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 9:30 AM, Artem S. Tashkinov <t.artem@lycos.com> wrote:
>
> My feeling is that vm.dirty_ratio/vm.dirty_background_ratio should _not_ be
> percentage based, 'cause for PCs/servers with a lot of memory (say 64GB or
> more) this value becomes unrealistic (13GB) and I've already had some
> unpleasant effects due to it.

Right. The percentage notion really goes back to the days when we
typically had 8-64 *megabytes* of memory So if you had a 8MB machine
you wouldn't want to have more than one megabyte of dirty data, but if
you were "Mr Moneybags" and could afford 64MB, you might want to have
up to 8MB dirty!!

Things have changed.

So I would suggest we change the defaults. Or pwehaps make the rule be
that "the ratio numbers are 'ratio of memory up to 1GB'", to make the
semantics similar across 32-bit HIGHMEM machines and 64-bit machines.

The modern way of expressing the dirty limits are to give the actual
absolute byte amounts, but we default to the legacy ratio mode..

                Linus

  reply	other threads:[~2013-10-25  8:43 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 56+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-10-25  7:25 Disabling in-memory write cache for x86-64 in Linux II Artem S. Tashkinov
2013-10-25  8:18 ` Linus Torvalds
2013-10-25  8:30   ` Artem S. Tashkinov
2013-10-25  8:43     ` Linus Torvalds [this message]
2013-10-25  9:15       ` Karl Kiniger
2013-10-29 20:30         ` Jan Kara
2013-10-29 20:43           ` Andrew Morton
2013-10-29 21:30             ` Jan Kara
2013-10-29 21:36             ` Linus Torvalds
2013-10-31 14:26           ` Karl Kiniger
2013-11-01 14:25             ` Maxim Patlasov
2013-11-01 14:31             ` [PATCH] mm: add strictlimit knob Maxim Patlasov
2013-11-04 22:01               ` Andrew Morton
2013-11-06 14:30                 ` Maxim Patlasov
2013-11-06 15:05                 ` [PATCH] mm: add strictlimit knob -v2 Maxim Patlasov
2013-11-07 12:26                   ` Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
2013-11-22 23:45                   ` Andrew Morton
2013-10-25 11:28       ` Disabling in-memory write cache for x86-64 in Linux II David Lang
2013-10-25  9:18     ` Theodore Ts'o
2013-10-25  9:29       ` Andrew Morton
2013-10-25  9:32         ` Linus Torvalds
2013-10-26 11:32           ` Pavel Machek
2013-10-26 20:03             ` Linus Torvalds
2013-10-29 20:57           ` Jan Kara
2013-10-29 21:33             ` Linus Torvalds
2013-10-29 22:13               ` Jan Kara
2013-10-29 22:42                 ` Linus Torvalds
2013-11-01 17:22                   ` Fengguang Wu
2013-11-04 12:19                     ` Pavel Machek
2013-11-04 12:26                   ` Pavel Machek
2013-10-30 12:01             ` Mel Gorman
2013-11-19 17:17               ` Rob Landley
2013-11-20 20:52                 ` One Thousand Gnomes
2013-10-25 22:37         ` Fengguang Wu
2013-10-25 23:05       ` Fengguang Wu
2013-10-25 23:37         ` Theodore Ts'o
2013-10-29 20:40           ` Jan Kara
2013-10-30 10:07             ` Artem S. Tashkinov
2013-10-30 15:12               ` Jan Kara
2013-11-05  0:50   ` Andreas Dilger
2013-11-05  4:12     ` Dave Chinner
2013-11-07 13:48       ` Jan Kara
2013-11-11  3:22         ` Dave Chinner
2013-11-11 19:31           ` Jan Kara
2013-10-25 10:49 ` NeilBrown
2013-10-25 11:26   ` David Lang
2013-10-25 18:26     ` Artem S. Tashkinov
2013-10-25 19:40       ` Diego Calleja
2013-10-25 23:32         ` Fengguang Wu
2013-11-15 15:48           ` Diego Calleja
2013-10-25 20:43       ` NeilBrown
2013-10-25 21:03         ` Artem S. Tashkinov
2013-10-25 22:11           ` NeilBrown
     [not found]             ` <CAF7GXvpJVLYDS5NfH-NVuN9bOJjAS5c1MQqSTjoiVBHJt6bWcw@mail.gmail.com>
2013-11-05  1:47               ` David Lang
2013-11-05  2:08               ` NeilBrown
2013-10-29 20:49       ` Jan Kara

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='CA+55aFxhJUrqdvw1To=9KLdxhYAOVwZLLeJT5yMRY5BT1weuHA@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=torvalds@linux-foundation.org \
    --cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
    --cc=fengguang.wu@intel.com \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=t.artem@lycos.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).