Re: [2.4.17/18pre] VM and swap - it's really unusable

On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 07:46:54PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Finally, I doubt that any of this will address my biggest problem with
> Linux, which is that as memory gets cheap a program doing significant disk
> writing can get buffers VERY full (perhaps a while CD worth) before the
> kernel decides to do the write, at which point the system becomes
> non-responsive for seconds at a time while the disk light comes on and
> stays on. That's another problem, and I did play with some patches this
> weekend without making myself really happy :-( Another topic,
> unfortunately.

I think this is a critical problem. I'd like to be able to have some
assurance that a task with a buffer of size N doing read-disk->write-disk
will maintain data flow at some minimal rate over intervals of 1 or 2
seconds or something like that.