Re: 2.1.91 swap performance: jerky.

Benjamin Redelings I (bredelin@UCSD.Edu)
Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:22:33 -0800

Hi Alan, I saw your post about problems in 2.1.91, and I think you
might want to try 2.1.92-pre1. The patch is pretty small... it looks
like it fixes some PPP bugs and some mm bugs. I've tried it myself, and
I barely have ANY swapping :) Although my machine is QUITE unstressed,
it was actually doing a lot of swapping before. Here is a summary of
the interesting mm parts:

file.c: (line 223)
+ /* Mark the buffer untouched if we'll move on to the next one.. */
+ if (!(pos & (sb->s_blocksize-1)))
+ clear_bit(BH_Touched, &bh->b_state);
page_alloc.c: (line 129)
- struct free_area_struct * list = NULL;
+ struct free_area_struct * list;
+
+ /*
+ * If we have more than 25% of all memory free,
+ * consider it to be good enough for anything.
+ */
+ if (nr_free_pages > num_physpages >> 2)
+ return nr+1;

I have a 64Mb PPro 166 machine, and have experienced no problems with
PPP, X windows, or swapping yet :)
Hope 'tis useful
-BenRI

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu