samba - Jun 2014 - limit samba page cache in linux

Hi,
I am using linux kernel 3.10.12 (mips) on my embedded router box with samba
server version: 3.0.24
Every time i transfer files from a hard disk connected to router to my
windows PC, all my router RAM is eaten up in form of page cache ( though it
can be reclaimed by kernel in case of need ).
The problem is i get lot of page allocation failures from some kernel
modules since page reclaim isnt fast enough ( i am continuously running
samba transfers).
I would like to limit page cache being used by samba server ( smbd). I
googled several threads but couldnt find satisfactory answer.
I stumbled upon cgroups ( memory_limit_in_bytes). When i use this, i was
successfully able to limit the page cache.
As a side effect, i see that "Buffers" in /proc/meminfo grows up and
sometimes smbd process is killed and respawned.

I was wondering if anybody was able to successfully limit the page cache
(with no side affects). Ofcourse i can drop caches using
/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches and tweak min_free_kbytes but this is not my
current intention.

Any pointers to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.

I hope this is right mailing list for the query. Please help me to find
right mailing list in case i am mistaken.

Cheers
Ajay

Hi,
Any pointers?

Thanks in advance.

-- Ajay


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 9:48 AM, ajay kanala <ajaykanala321 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
> I am using linux kernel 3.10.12 (mips) on my embedded router box with
> samba server version: 3.0.24
> Every time i transfer files from a hard disk connected to router to my
> windows PC, all my router RAM is eaten up in form of page cache ( though it
> can be reclaimed by kernel in case of need ).
> The problem is i get lot of page allocation failures from some kernel
> modules since page reclaim isnt fast enough ( i am continuously running
> samba transfers).
> I would like to limit page cache being used by samba server ( smbd). I
> googled several threads but couldnt find satisfactory answer.
> I stumbled upon cgroups ( memory_limit_in_bytes). When i use this, i was
> successfully able to limit the page cache.
> As a side effect, i see that "Buffers" in /proc/meminfo grows up
and
> sometimes smbd process is killed and respawned.
>
> I was wondering if anybody was able to successfully limit the page cache
> (with no side affects). Ofcourse i can drop caches using
> /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches and tweak min_free_kbytes but this is not my
> current intention.
>
> Any pointers to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.
>
> I hope this is right mailing list for the query. Please help me to find
> right mailing list in case i am mistaken.
>
> Cheers
> Ajay
>