From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759687AbZC0DlX (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:41:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757820AbZC0DlO (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:41:14 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:40795 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753641AbZC0DlO (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:41:14 -0400 Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:38:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: Andrew Morton cc: Theodore Tso , David Rees , Jesper Krogh , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.29 In-Reply-To: <20090326182519.d576d703.akpm@linux-foundation.org> Message-ID: References: <49C87B87.4020108@krogh.cc> <72dbd3150903232346g5af126d7sb5ad4949a7b5041f@mail.gmail.com> <49C88C80.5010803@krogh.cc> <72dbd3150903241200v38720ca0x392c381f295bdea@mail.gmail.com> <20090325183011.GN32307@mit.edu> <20090325220530.GR32307@mit.edu> <20090326171148.9bf8f1ec.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090326174704.cd36bf7b.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20090326182519.d576d703.akpm@linux-foundation.org> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Andrew Morton wrote: > > Why does everyone just sit around waiting for the kernel to put a new > value into two magic numbers which userspace scripts could have set? > > My /etc/rc.local has been tweaking dirty_ratio, dirty_background_ratio > and swappiness for many years. I guess I'm just incredibly advanced. .. and as a result you're also testing something that nobody else is. Look at the complaints from people about fsync behavior that Ted says he cannot see. Let me guess: it's because Ted probably has tweaked his environment, because he is advanced. As a result, other people see problems, he does not. That's not "advanced". That's totally f*cking broken. Having different distributions tweak all those tweakables is just even _more_ so. It's the anti-thesis of "advanced". It's just stupid. We should aim to get it right. The "user space can tweak any numbers they want" is ALWAYS THE WRONG ANSWER. It's a cop-out, but more importantly, it's a cop-out that doesn't even work, and that just results in everybody having different setups. Then nobody is happy. Linus