Re: swapping and cache usage

Andrea Arcangeli (andrea@suse.de)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 23:14:41 +0200 (CEST)


On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Oskar Liljeblad wrote:

>Why does Linux 2.2(.12) swap memory for "running" programs to disk, in
>favor of disk cache? (The programs were X apps, in sleep state, but

Because the VM recycle algorithm it's not well tuned for high intensive
I/O application. Apply these two my fixes and the problem will disappear:

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/andrea/kernel-patches/my-2.2.12/no-swapout-2.2.10-B
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/andrea/kernel-patches/my-2.2.12/shrink_all_cache-2.2.10-A

If you are also going to swap heavily some time you may want to apply also
this one:

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/andrea/kernel-patches/my-2.2.12/trashing-mem-2.2.10-A

If you have an SMP machine you may want to apply also this other my patch
that rewrote reschedule_idle improving the global performance of the
system.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/andrea/kernel-patches/my-2.2.12/SMP-scheduler-2.2.11-E

All the above patches are ready for production so really don't worry to
apply them on a production 2.2.12.

Any positive/negative feedback is always welcome ;).

Thanks.

Andrea

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