Re: ~500 megs cached yet 2.6.5 goes into swap hell

[Tim Connors]

Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said on Thu, 29 Apr 2004 10:54:36 +1000:
> Wakko Warner wrote:
> >>I don't know. What if you have some huge application that only
> >>runs once per day for 10 minutes? Do you want it to be consuming
> >>100MB of your memory for the other 23 hours and 50 minutes for
> >>no good reason?
> > 
> > 
> > I keep soffice open all the time.  The box in question has 512mb of ram. 
> > This is one app, even though I use it infrequently, would prefer that it
> > never be swapped out.  Mainly when I want to use it, I *WANT* it now (ie not
> > waiting for it to come back from swap)
> > 
> > This is just my oppinion.  I personally feel that cache should use available
> > memory, not already used memory (swapping apps out for more cache).
> > 
> 
> On the other hand, suppose that with soffice resident the entire
> time, you don't have enough memory to cache an entire kernel tree
> (or video you are editing, or whatever).

For the kernel example, I only ever compile once before rebooting[1]
:)

This I think is the kind of thing that a kernel will never
automatically detect. This *must* be in the hands of the
administrator, who will know what they are doing (hopefully).

[1] I have never had enough memory on machines that I use to compile
kernels, to cache an entire tree anyway -- I'd much rather mozilla use
it than a cache which will never be reused

-- 
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
[transporting bed]... across several suburbs and a large salt water
harbour. Well, they thoughtfully bridged the harbour in the 1930s, so
the problem was actually transporting it across several suburbs and a
long single span bridge.          -- Hipatia
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