From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266233AbUG0Dtb (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:49:31 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266237AbUG0Dtb (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:49:31 -0400 Received: from inet-mail4.oracle.com ([148.87.2.204]:21636 "EHLO inet-mail4.oracle.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266233AbUG0Dt3 (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:49:29 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:47:39 -0700 From: Joel Becker To: Tim Connors Cc: Con Kolivas , Clemens Schwaighofer , Andrew Morton , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Autotune swappiness01 Message-ID: <20040727034739.GA2161@ca-server1.us.oracle.com> Mail-Followup-To: Tim Connors , Con Kolivas , Clemens Schwaighofer , Andrew Morton , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: <20040726202946.GD26075@ca-server1.us.oracle.com> <20040726134258.37531648.akpm@osdl.org> <4105A761.9090905@tequila.co.jp> <20040726180943.4c871e4f.akpm@osdl.org> <4105AD1C.2050507@tequila.co.jp> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Burt-Line: Trees are cool. X-Red-Smith: Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man has ever come to perfection. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040523i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 01:02:32PM +1000, Tim Connors wrote: > I am not trying to say anything bad about your work - I am trying to > caution Andrew that not everyone cares so much that they lose 200 megs of > pagecache. It doesn't affect everyone equally - I'm just trying to put the > voice of those of us who care more about responsiveness than throughput, > if I may borrow the argument from upthread. I happen to be a person who rolls his eyes at everyone's mention of micro-optimized "feel". I've found that any system faster than 300MHz is pretty decent for normal desktop work (that is, moz + lots of terminals in gnome/kde). Yes, I'm a luddite, I used to wait 45 seconds for moz to start in the morning on the 300Mhz. I survived. In general, I can't notice the difference between 2.6.anything on my 1GHz. Maybe everyone else can, but I can't. HOWEVER, the swappiness of '60' puts my system into fits-and-starts mode. Not "It feels slower", but "It pauses for seconds at a time." So I chimed in on this. And yes, I'd give up oodles of pagecache to avoid fits and starts. But there's got to be a way to use the pagecache and not hang for seconds at a time. Joel -- "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying." - Woody Allen Joel Becker Senior Member of Technical Staff Oracle Corporation E-mail: joel.becker@oracle.com Phone: (650) 506-8127