Big thanks to @hnakamur2 for diligently translating two of my articles — "In defence of swap" ( and "Linux memory management at scale" ( — to Japanese! ご苦労様です！🇯🇵

And many thanks to @samwhoo and @javierhonduco for all their suggestions during writing this!.

Ever wondered how Linux manages process states, especially uninterruptible sleep ("D" in ps/top/etc)? What if I told you that -- despite what most Linux users think -- you can often actually interrupt or kill them?.

RT @MetaOpenSource: Signals make up the plumbing in Unix-like operating environments, but they come with a significant number of pitfalls a….

RT @nixcraft: tmpfs inode corruption: introducing inode64 on Linux

RT @TariqGamil: @unixchris created a fantastic.highlights reel of the 2021 @RaceDepartment.GT Championship. Always a pleasure racing again….

Thanks @lwnnet for the writeup on my work to improve printk() observability! This should be useful for anyone who needs to monitor and react to emerging issues, since it's not always feasible to have a stable metric or tracepoint. Just sent v7 upstream.

. and even if you don't use Arch Linux, you can still use these new 64-bit tmpfs inodes from kernel 5.9 onwards. Mount your tmpfs with the `inode64` mount option, and those sweet legacy-free inodes will come right to you.

My work preventing tmpfs inode corruption ( is now enabled in the Arch Linux kernel. If you're a heavy tmpfs user and rely on unique inode numbering for identity (eg. a build system), try it out! This likely solves some transient issues for you :-)

Today I reached 100,000 rep on Unix/Linux @StackExchange. I owe a lot to it: it helped me get my first paid job when I had no degree or other credentials, and contributing has sharpened my skills dramatically over the years. Thanks @codinghorror, @spolsky, and other SE folks!

RT @LinuxReviews: Chris Down, kernel engineer at Facebook, gave a 40 minute talk titled "Linux memory management at scale" at the #Arch #Li….

This weekend I'll be speaking at Arch Conf 2020 about our kernel memory management strategy at Facebook, and how it might apply to distribution maintainers and other Linux users. Hope to see you there! :-).

RT @codinghorror: Swap memory is woefully misunderstood; it is a good thing

Here's a fun project I've been working on that can alert you when resources on your desktop/laptop are becoming oversaturated, and allows you to take action *before* your system slows to a crawl. Feedback and suggestions welcome! :-).

RT @hnakamur2: Chris DownさんのLinuxのスワップによくある誤解を解く記事を許可を頂いて日本語訳したところ、なんとご本人のブログに掲載してくださると提案頂いて、先ほど公開されました。.物理メモリが十分にあってもスワップは重要ということが詳しく解説されて….

RT @hnakamur2: "FOSDEM 2020 - Linux memory management at scale".Linuxのメモリ管理について私は何もわかってなかったことに気づかされました。.可能なら最大値を制限す….

RT @waxzce: "1195725856" and other mysterious numbers

RT @newsycombinator: On “1195725856” and other mysterious numbers

RT @copyconstruct: Taiji: Dynamic Traffic Engineering at Facebook. This is just utterly freaking NEXT LEVEL! 🤯. - Load balancing modeled as….

RT @kuenishi: Super cool; I've been hating sudden OOM kill for years, esp. these days