From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261236AbVCXX2y (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:28:54 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261243AbVCXX2y (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:28:54 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:41146 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261236AbVCXX2x (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:28:53 -0500 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:27:31 -0500 From: Bill Nottingham To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Cc: akpm@osdl.org Subject: bad caching behavior in 2.6.12rc1 Message-ID: <20050324232731.GA14812@nostromo.devel.redhat.com> Mail-Followup-To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@osdl.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org When I upgraded from 2.6.11 to 2.6.12rc1, the VM started behaving really badly with respect to caching. Test box is a 1.5GB laptop. In typical use, I would open a mailbox A, and then switch to mailbox B. Immediately switching back to mailbox A, I would find out it was no longer cached. (Using maildirs, FWIW.) Looking at /proc/meminfo, I would see: LowFree: 8-12MB HighFree: 300-400MB Cached: 100-200MB i.e., it was evicting cache when there was plenty of highmem available for use. When going back to 2.6.11, and using the same sort of the workload, the caching would behave more as expected. Bill