Re: Swap

[Dan Maas]

> > If you don't have swap, maybe one, or both of the two
> > kernel trees will end up being not cached into main
> > memory, depending on how much RAM left you have. but going
> > back to X will take 1 second instead of 20,
> > and thus the system will be more responsive.

> A perfect example of why a system _needs_ tuning knobs - this view of
> Linus's that we need a self tuning system is idiotic, because some of us
> don't care how long a kernel compile takes (or even how long it takes to
> serve a couple of web pages per hour), but _do_ care about the general
> system responsiveness.

For what it's worth, I heartily agree...

Linus et al might very well say "if you care so much about keeping X in RAM,
just mlock() it." This is certainly worth a shot. (though I'd much prefer a
configurable 'weight' or 'stickiness' for file mappings vs. cached buffers).

Of course this sort of second-order tuning mechanism is a lot less important
than having a VM that doesn't crash or suck badly for common loads =)...
(not that the VM has been bad at all lately; I haven't had any problems
since 2.4.9-ac10 or 2.4.14, knock on wood...)

Regards,
Dan