Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] tmpfs: add the option to disable swap

From: Luis Chamberlain
Date: Tue Apr 18 2023 - 16:56:14 EST


On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 09:31:20PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Mar 2023, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
>
> > I'm doing this work as part of future experimentation with tmpfs and the
> > page cache, but given a common complaint found about tmpfs is the
> > innability to work without the page cache I figured this might be useful
> > to others. It turns out it is -- at least Christian Brauner indicates
> > systemd uses ramfs for a few use-cases because they don't want to use
> > swap and so having this option would let them move over to using tmpfs
> > for those small use cases, see systemd-creds(1).
>
> Thanks for your thorough work on tmpfs "noswap": seems well-received
> by quite a few others, that's good.
>
> I've just a few comments on later patches (I don't understand why you
> went into those little rearrangements at the start of shmem_writepage(),
> but they seem harmless so I don't object),

Because the devil is in the details as you noted too!

> but wanted to ask here:
>
> You say "a common complaint about tmpfs is the inability to work without
> the page cache". Ehh?

That was a mistake! s/page cache/swap.

Luis