[Beowulf] Linux page cache and pdflush

[Mark Hahn]

>> http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/linux-pdflush.htm

only tangentially.  I do normally tune the dirty parameters to 
write/clean dirty pages more agressively, but this really has 
nothing to do with the drop_cache behavior being advocated.

>> If anyone knows of a more recent version of the RHEL paper referenced
>> therein:
>>
>>         http://people.redhat.com/nhorman/papers/rhel4_vm.pdf

I read it quickly just now and think it's still reasonably accurate.
obviously, 64b systems are the norm these days, which disappears
the zone Highmem.

the topic being discussed is really all about two edges in figure 3:
using the drop_caches sledgehammer just pushes all pages
from inactive-clean to free, making it impossible for 
inactive-clean pages to be reactivated (ie, avoiding a read.)

regards, mark hahn.