Re: [PATCH 00/20] vm deadlock avoidance for NFS, NBD and iSCSI (take 7)

[Nate Diller]

On 9/12/06, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >
> > Linus, when I mentioned swap over network to you in Ottawa, you said it was
> > a valid use case, that people actually do and want this. Can you agree with
> > the approach taken in these patches?
>
> Well, in all honesty, I don't think I really said "valid", but that I said
> that some crazy people want to do it, and that we should try to allow them
> their foibles.
>
> So I'd be nervous to do any _guarantees_. I think that good VM policies
> should make it be something that works in general (the dirty mapping
> limits in particular), but I'd be a bit nervous about anybody taking it
> _too_ seriously. Crazy people are still crazy, they just might be right
> under certain reasonably-well-controlled circumstances.

(oops, forgot to cc: the list)

Personally, I'm a little unhappy with the added complexity here, I'm
not convinced that this extra feature is worth it.  In particular,
adding to the address_space_operations, the block_device_operations,
and creating a new swap index/offset interface just for this seems
questionable.  I feel like interface bloat should be reserved for
features that have widespread use and benefit.

Not that I'm opposed to this feature, just that I think this patch is
too invasive interface-wise.

NATE
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