From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261428AbVFONoc (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Jun 2005 09:44:32 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261438AbVFONoc (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Jun 2005 09:44:32 -0400 Received: from pop.gmx.net ([213.165.64.20]:17588 "HELO mail.gmx.net") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S261428AbVFONo3 (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Jun 2005 09:44:29 -0400 X-Authenticated: #137701 From: Alexander Gretencord To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Swapping in 2.6.10 and 2.6.11.11 on a desktop system Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:44:16 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.1 Cc: Con Kolivas References: <200506141653.32093.arutha@gmx.de> <200506150242.02606.kernel@kolivas.org> In-Reply-To: <200506150242.02606.kernel@kolivas.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200506151544.17191.arutha@gmx.de> X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tuesday 14 June 2005 18:42, Con Kolivas wrote: > Try the mapped watermark patch from -ck on 2.6.11* Unfortunately this patch does not help either. The patch buys me time but then I get swapping at the 300MB mark. 2.6.8.1 with swappiness=0 swaps later than this... These are 'free -m' statistics a minute after reaching the 300MB mark: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 503 498 5 0 36 376 -/+ buffers/cache: 85 418 Swap: 494 227 266 Why does the kernel think that I need 400MB of disk cache when I start some memory hungry apps? Can't we have a hard limit on disk cache, like: "Don't use more than 100MB of disk cache". The problem seems to be that instead of using a big disk cache when theres plenty of ram and reducing disk cache when applications need the ram, the disk cache shrinks until a magic watermark and then grows and grows until theres no ram left for the applications. At least thats the behaviour I am seeing. Alex P.S.: Please cc me as I'm not on the list.