Yes .. I know ALL about that. But THAT isn't what I'm referring to..
The thing was THRASHING. 50% of my mem for cache is excessive when I'm
that far into swap.
IMO that faq entry doesn't apply to cases where I'm at 99% swap useage. Or
did you even bother to read the numbers ?
Gerhard
On Thu, 13 Jul 2000 willy@thepuffingroup.com wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 04:40:40PM -0700, Gerhard Mack wrote:
> > These things all seem to show up after a day but I noticed this during a
> > compile.. why does it keep 17 meg in cache when it's 20 meg into swap ???
>
> because the cache is more useful than the programs it has swapped out?
>
> Isn't this a FAQ by now?
>
> Oh, it's not in the list. OK:
>
> Q: Linux is using many megabytes of swap while I still have a lot of
> memory being used as cache. Shouldn't it discard the cache instead of
> swapping out programs?
>
> A: (MRW) Not really. Linux will swap out binaries which haven't been
> used for a long time (eg lprd on many systems) in favour of retaining data
> from files which have been used recently (eg header files while compiling
> a big program). This is more efficient. Trust us, we're engineers.
>
> --
> The Sex Pistols were revolutionaries. The Bay City Rollers weren't.
>
-- Gerhard Mack<>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.
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