Re: 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes....

Nick Warne
2004-11-27T15:43:30Z

On Friday 26 November 2004 11:53, Nix wrote:
> On 24 Nov 2004, Nick Warne mused:
> > Normally memory slowly fills up, perhaps using swap for a bit under these
> > circumstances - but looking afterwards:
>
> This is a feature, not a bug. Free memory is wasted memory (although
> some has to be kept free for drivers that need GFP_ATOMIC allocations:
> i.e. `memory *now* dammit *now*'.
>
> > root@linuxamd:~# free
> > total used free shared buffers cached
> > Mem: 1292348 520012 772336 0 38596 327304
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 154112 1138236
> > Swap: 1959888 0 1959888
>
> The only thing I can think of that causes this is something very
> memory-hungry that's just been killed, releasing a pile of pages back to
> the system.
>
> > But whatever, I am impressed indeed - somethings changed for the good!!!
>
> I see no signs of such a change on my 2.4.28 boxes:

~snip~

Ummm. I do, though. Maybe the cause is I am getting more experienced, and
building kernels now, I _do_ the right things. But for some reason I do find
2.4.28 a lot more responsive to memory usage - I really do.