[Devel] Re: [RFC][PATCH][0/4] Memory controller (RSS Control)

[Paul Menage]

On 2/19/07, Andrew Morton <akpm at linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> Alas, I fear this might have quite bad worst-case behaviour.  One small
> container which is under constant memory pressure will churn the
> system-wide LRUs like mad, and will consume rather a lot of system time.
> So it's a point at which container A can deleteriously affect things which
> are running in other containers, which is exactly what we're supposed to
> not do.

I think it's OK for a container to consume lots of system time during
reclaim, as long as we can account that time to the container involved
(i.e. if it's done during direct reclaim rather than by something like
kswapd).

Churning the LRU could well be bad though, I agree.

Paul