Re: [PATCH] 2.6.4-rc2-mm1: vm-split-active-lists

From: Jamie Lokier
Date: Fri Mar 12 2004 - 06:49:11 EST


Matthias Urlichs wrote:
> > That effect is to cause the whole world to be swapped out when people
> > return to their machines in the morning.
>
> The correct solution to this problem is "suspend-to-disk" --
> if the machine isn't doing anything anyway, TURN IT OFF.

How is that better for people complaining that everything needs to be
swapped in in the morning?

Suspend-to-disk will cause everything to be paged in too. Faster I
suspect (haven't tried it; it doesn't work on my box), but still a
wait especially when you add in the BIOS boot time.

Environmentally turning an unused machine off is good. But I don't
see how suspend-to-disk will convince people who are annoyed by
swapping in the morning.

> One slightly more practical solution from the "you-now-who gets angry
> mails" POV anyway, would be to tie the reduced-rate scanning to the load
> average -- if nothing at all happens, swap-out doesn't need to happen
> either.

If nothing at all happens, does it matter that pages are written to
swap? They're still in RAM as well.

-- Jamie
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