in 4.2-REL which I ripped out in -stable and -current when implementing the
low-memory handling solution. However, maxlaunder turns out to be the saving
grace in certain very heavily loaded systems (e.g. newsreader box). The new
algorithm limits the number of pages laundered in the first pageout daemon
pass. If that is not sufficient then suceessive will be run without any
limit.
Write I/O is now pipelined using two sysctls, vfs.lorunningspace and
vfs.hirunningspace. This prevents excessive buffered writes in the
disk queues which cause long (multi-second) delays for reads. It leads
to more stable (less jerky) and generally faster I/O streaming to disk
by allowing required read ops (e.g. for indirect blocks and such) to occur
without interrupting the write stream, amoung other things.
NOTE: eventually, filesystem write I/O pipelining needs to be done on a
per-device basis. At the moment it is globalized.
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