Re: Out Of Memory in v. 2.1

Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH (allbery@kf8nh.apk.net)
Sun, 04 Oct 1998 20:53:43 -0300


In message <Pine.LNX.4.05.9810042005290.276-100000@tahallah.demon.co.uk>,
Alex
Buell writes:
+-----
| On Sun, 4 Oct 1998, Alan Cox wrote:
| > And to boot a machine with 512Mb of RAM you'll need at least 600Mb or
| > so of swap file.
|
| Why would a machine with that amount of memory need that much swap space?
| I'd have thought it wouldn't need more than 128MB at best as swap.
+--->8

You missed the context: this is what would happen without swap-overcommit,
so every active page of memory has to have swap allocated for it at the same
time.

And this is why Linux and most other modern OSes use swap-overcommit.

-- 
brandon s. allbery	[os/2][linux][solaris][japh]	 allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator	     [WAY too many hats]	   allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering					 KF8NH
carnegie mellon university

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/