linux 2.5 kernel related kde startup improvements [Fwd - akpm@digeo.com: 2.5.64-mm6]

[Andrew Morton]

"ismail (cartman) donmez" <voidcartman@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
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> Hi Alex,
> 
> > hiya all.
> > 
> > here's an interesting message that i noticed on
> > linux-kernel mailing list today, note that its
> > been cut down for your reading pleasure :)
> > 
> > anyone out there feel like being a tester? :)
> > (assuming you have experience with using devel kernels
> >  in the past, i wouldn't touch this otherwise)
> > 
> > mvg,
> > Alex
> 
> I am running 2.5.63, I can give some benchmark after updating to 2.5.65 after 
> its out as 2.5.64 has problems for me.
> 

These changes will not be present in 2.5.65.  In fact they will never
be merged.

The correct way to do this is to teach glibc (and anything else which
maps executables) to run madvise(MADV_WILLNEED) against the mapping
immediately after mmap.   This speedup will work in current 2.4 kernels
also.

If you want to play with the kernel-side prefaulting code then you'll need
to run a -mm kernel such as

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.5/2.5.64/2.5.64-mm7/

(or -mm8, but it has vanished.  kernel.org seems to be playing up)

Others have tested this and have confirmed that it halves application
startup times.