From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263820AbUGZUza (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 16:55:30 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262380AbUGZUza (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 16:55:30 -0400 Received: from agminet02.oracle.com ([141.146.126.229]:39558 "EHLO agminet02.oracle.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265724AbUGZUjy (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 16:39:54 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:29:46 -0700 From: Joel Becker To: Con Kolivas Cc: Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Autotune swappiness01 Message-ID: <20040726202946.GD26075@ca-server1.us.oracle.com> Mail-Followup-To: Con Kolivas , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20040725173652.274dcac6.akpm@osdl.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Burt-Line: Trees are cool. X-Red-Smith: Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man has ever come to perfection. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040523i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 10:43:01AM +1000, Con Kolivas wrote: > Low memory boxes and ones that are heavily laden with applications find > that ends up making things slow down trying to keep all applications in > physical ram. Lowish memory boxes with plain desktop loads find that the default of '60' is a terrible one (I'm speaking of 1GHz-ish machines with 256MB (like mine) or 512MB (like a guy next to me)). Every person I know who installs 2.6 complains about how it feels slow and choppy. I tell them "The first thing I do after installing 2.6 is set swappiness to '20'." Sure enough, they set swappiness to 20 and their box starts behaving like a properly tuned one. I don't know what workload the default of '60' is for, but for the (128MB < x < 1GB) of RAM case, it sucks (and I've seen the same behavior on a 300MHz 196MB box). Joel -- "Maybe the time has drawn the faces I recall. But things in this life change very slowly, If they ever change at all." Joel Becker Senior Member of Technical Staff Oracle Corporation E-mail: joel.becker@oracle.com Phone: (650) 506-8127