Jörn Engel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Sun, 16 September 2007 00:30:32 +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote: >> >> Movable? I rather assume all slab allocations aren't movable. Then >> slab defrag can try to tackle on users like dcache and inodes. Keep in >> mind that with the exception of updatedb, those inodes/dentries will >> be pinned and you won't move them, which is why I prefer to consider >> them not movable too... since there's no guarantee they are. > > I have been toying with the idea of having seperate caches for pinned > and movable dentries. Downside of such a patch would be the number of > memcpy() operations when moving dentries from one cache to the other. > Upside is that a fair amount of slab cache can be made movable. > memcpy() is still faster than reading an object from disk.
How probable is it that the dentry is needed again? If you copy it and it is not needed then you wasted time. If you throw it out and it is needed then you wasted time too. Depending on the probability one of the two is cheaper overall. Idealy I would throw away dentries that haven't been accessed recently and copy recently used ones. How much of a systems ram is spend on dentires? How much on task structures? Does anyone have some stats on that? If it is <10% of the total ram combined then I don't see much point in moving them. Just keep them out of the way of users memory so the buddy system can work effectively. > Most likely the current reaction to such a patch would be to shoot it > down due to overhead, so I didn't pursue it. All I have is an old patch > to seperate never-cached from possibly-cached dentries. It will > increase the odds of freeing a slab, but provide no guarantee. > > But the point here is: dentries/inodes can be made movable if there are > clear advantages to it. Maybe they should? > > Jörn MfG Goswin - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html