2.2.1/Util-Linux 2.9g Needed? "out of swap space" problems...

Matthew Jacob (mjacob@feral.com)
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 14:28:35 -0800 (PST)


I have programs dies with 'out of swap' space problems for 2.2.1. Big
pain. I have 100MB free of swap. I'm talking about 3-4 programs running
that fill up some disks with patterns (4k blocks) and read/write them
randomly. There is 256MB memory, of which 200+MB gets sucked down into the
buffer cache. After a half hour of this, nearly all user apps get blown
away with "Out of swap space" messages. Huh? Or is it because the swap
area is less than physical memory- that seems a bit harsh.

Documentation/Changes says I need mkswap from 2.9g. The site listed no
longer has the package. Can't find it elsewhere. Any clues as to where it
might be and whether this would solve the problem (if it does, great- but
this is a bit of a usability issue if you have to do new mkswaps to
function).

On a side note, any kind of operation that seems to suck down the buffer
cache (due to, I'd guess, extremely aggressive writebehind) makes the
system response really suck. Is this a tunable?

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