Re: 2.4.10 VM: what avoids from having lots of unwriteable inactive

[Rik van Riel]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > >
> > > swap_out() will deactivate everything it finds to be not-recently used,
> > > and that's how the inactive list ends up getting replenished.
> >
> > mlock()
>
> Hey, if you've mlock'ed more than your available memory, there's nothing
> the VM layer can do. Except maybe a nice printk("Kiss your *ss goodbye");

But if you've mlock()ed enough to clog up the inactive
list, the VM could just move the pages it cannot free
back to the active list and it will come across those
pages which are freeable eventually.

Note that the maximum amount of mlock()ed memory is way
higher than the maximum amount of pages the system puts
on the inactive list.

(at least, it was last I looked at the maximum number
of mlocked pages)

regards,

Rik
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