Swap strangeness using 2.4.5pre2aa1

G. Hugh Song
2001-05-23T18:23:27Z

My Alpha/LInux UP2000 SMP with 1GB memory is running kernel
2.4.5pre2aa1.
I have been observing some strangeness with Swap usage quite recently
(in fact since 2.4.4). Unfortunately, the kernel was made using
gcc-2.95.2-136.alpha.rpm provided by SuSE-7.0.

The following is the output from "free"
=========================================================================
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 1023128 1015640 7488 0 544
948976
-/+ buffers/cache: 66120 957008
Swap: 1021936 1021936 0
==========================================================================

And the following is the output from "top"
===========================================================================
3:09am up 3 days, 5:49, 7 users, load average: 1.60, 2.02, 3.05
82 processes: 79 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.1% user, 4.0% system, 80.3% nice, 15.4% idle
Mem: 1023128K av, 1016128K used, 7000K free, 0K shrd, 736K
buff
Swap: 1021936K av, 1021936K used, 0K free 948968K
cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME
COMMAND
9555 sekim 20 10 437M 345M 345M R N 108M 90.4 17.2 1881m
full.ax
9547 sekim 18 10 95624 24M 792 R N 13M 75.8 1.2 1424m
optcon.ax
21133 hugh 16 0 1976 1976 1648 R 1872 1.0 0.0 0:02 top
5 root 12 0 0 0 0 SW 0 0.4 0.0 151:52
kswapd
1 root 12 0 128 104 104 S 16 0.0 0.0 0:44 init
2 root 12 0 0 0 0 SW 0 0.0 0.0 0:00
keventd
3 root 20 19 0 0 0 SWN 0 0.0 0.0 0:01
ksoftirqd_CP
4 root 20 19 0 0 0 SWN 0 0.0 0.0 0:00
ksoftirqd_CP
6 root 12 0 0 0 0 SW 0 0.0 0.0 0:00
kreclaimd
7 root 12 0 0 0 0 SW 0 0.0 0.0 0:00
bdflush
8 root 12 0 0 0 0 SW 0 0.0 0.0 1:03
kupdated
159 bin 12 0 216 136 136 S 128 0.0 0.0 2:31
portmap
183 root 12 0 272 168 168 S 120 0.0 0.0 4:25
syslogd
187 root 12 0 960 8 8 S 0 0.0 0.0 0:06 klogd
227 root 12 0 136 8 8 S 0 0.0 0.0 0:00
rpc.rquotad

......

=============================================================================

At this point, the mouse movement crawls down at an unacceptable level.
I
cannot understand that the above showing of 0 free space of swap space
although the sum of all memeory usages is far less than 1GB.

I understand that free swap space may become close to 0 and stay there
for
a while once it ever reached down close to zero. However, it should
back
up some nonzero number if the situation is cleared.

Please tell me whether something is wrong or not with the kernel. If
so,
I think I should back down to Kernel 2.2.20pre2aa1.

Thank you very much.

--
G. Hugh Song

Assoc. Professor
Office: +82-62-970-2210 fax: -3156 handphone: +82-16-608-2210
Email: ghsong@kjist.ac.kr
Department of Information and Communications
Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology
1 Oryong-dong, Buk-gu, Gwangju, 500-712 South KOREA