Re: page_launder() on 2.4.9/10 issue

[Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>]

> forgive me if I'm asking a silly question or making a silly comment. It
> seems to me, from what I've seen of this discussion so far, that the only
> way one "tunes" Linux kernels at the moment is by changing code and
> rebuilding the kernel. That is, there are few "tunables" that one can set,
> based on one's circumstances, to optimize kernel performance for a specific
> application or environment.

There are a lot of tunables in /proc/sys. An excellent tool for playing with
them is "powertweak". 

> No one "memory management scheme", for example, can be all things to all
> tasks, and it seems to me that giving users tools to measure and control the
> behavior of memory management, *preferably without having to recompile and
> reboot*, should be a major priority if Linux is to succeed in a wide variety
> of applications.

The VM is tunable in the -ac tree. I still believe the VM can and should be
self tuning but we are not there yet.

> OK, I'll get off my soapbox now, and ask a related question. Is there a
> mathematical model of the Linux kernel somewhere that I could get my hands
> on?

Not that I am aware of. 

Alan