The command to set the "freepages" file in /proc/sys/vm used to work like
thus:
echo 100 150 200 > /proc/sys/vm/freepages
Now, what you get is something like:
200 96 128
where 96 and 128 are the originals.
I don't know when this changed, but the problem seems
to be that it doesn't like spaces in the input.
If I do a "cat > freepages" and then type:
100(tab)150(tab)200(newline)
(control-d)
I can set the values correctly. I wonder if this isn't causing
memory problems for developers, who are likely to already have
"echo 100 200 300 > /proc/sys/vm/freepages" commands in their
boot scripts.
While we're at it, would it make sense to prevent people from
setting the values as above, i.e. for a,b,c, if !(a>b && b>c)
ignore the change and give an err message?