Re: [PATCH] Separate global/perzone inactive/free shortage

[Dirk]

Marcelo Tosatti wrote:

> Hi,
>
> As well known, the VM does not make a distiction between global and
> per-zone shortages when trying to free memory. That means if only a given
> memory zone is under shortage, the kernel will scan pages from all zones.
>
> The following patch (against 2.4.6-ac2), changes the kernel behaviour to
> avoid freeing pages from zones which do not have an inactive and/or
> free shortage.
>
> Now I'm able to run memory hogs allocating 4GB of memory (on 4GB machine)
> without getting real long hangs on my ssh session. (which used to happen
> on stock -ac2 due to exhaustion of DMA pages for networking).
>
> Comments ?
>
> Dirk, Can you please try the patch and tell us if it fixes your problem ?
>

great!! that is definitely better, the machine talks to me again. there are some
small "but"s. however. i write them up and let you know.

    ~dirkw