[issue13324] fcntl module doesn't support F_NOCACHE (OS X specific) results in high 'inactive' memory performance issues

[Charles-François Natali]

Charles-François Natali <neologix at free.fr> added the comment:

> With this patch in place the inactive memory on my system stays (low)
> and flat, without it it rises until it maxes out all available memory
> and then starts paging.

It's often a desired behaviour: paging out unused memory makes room for a bigger page cache, which yields better performance. Also, it's a simple heuristic to know which pages are actually in use.
Linux has a systcl that can be used to tune the swap tendency (vm.swappiness).
Anyway, since it seems to improve performance under some workloads and it's just a constant, I've applied your patch.
Thanks!

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nosy: +neologix
resolution:  -> fixed
stage:  -> committed/rejected
status: open -> closed
type: resource usage -> behavior
versions: +Python 3.3 -Python 2.6, Python 2.7

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue13324>
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