Happiness with t8-vmpatch4 (was Re: Does page-aging really work?)

[Benjamin Redelings I <bredelin@ucla.edu>]

Hi guys - 
	I have done a few small tests on t8-vmpatch4 (64Mb RAM, 166Mhz UP
PPro), and I must say that I am very happy with the results.  More
comparison with test8 vanilla confirms that Rik's version is much more
responsive, also that Rik is (or course) correct - unused process are
indeed swapped out, but shared pages from (I assume) libc remain.

	Observations:
   1. test8-vmpatch4 does not swap very much at first, but then swaps a
lot of memory in a short time when triggered.
	Specifically, I untarred a kernel source tree and saw NO swapping . 
The working set was NOT evicted :)  I then started more programs, and
saw that the cache shrunk a lot: still no swapping.  Then I ran the
untar again, and the kernel swapped out 22Mb very quickly.  However, I
must say that it was still very smooth - I didn't even notice the
swapping until I looked at xosview; normally it is quite audible.  Also,
the choice of pages for swapping out seemed to be VERY accurate - there
was virtually no page-in as long as I was watching...

  2. I guess we could wish that unused programs got swapped a bit sooner
instead of all at once - but presumably that can be tuned.

	Congrats on the great code!  Tuning does indeed seem to be fixing the
problems that I saw before.

thanks again,
-BenRI
-- 
"I want to be in the light, as He is in the Light,
 I want to shine like the stars in the heavens." - DC Talk, "In the
Light"
Benjamin Redelings I      <><     http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~bredelin/
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