From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750752AbWDEOrS (ORCPT ); Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:47:18 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750812AbWDEOrS (ORCPT ); Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:47:18 -0400 Received: from wilma.widomaker.com ([204.17.220.5]:3347 "EHLO wilma.widomaker.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750752AbWDEOrS (ORCPT ); Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:47:18 -0400 Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:47:17 -0400 From: Charles Shannon Hendrix To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: OOM kills if swappiness set to 0, swap storms otherwise Message-ID: <20060405144716.GA10353@widomaker.com> References: <1143510828.1792.353.camel@mindpipe> <20060327195905.7f666cb5.akpm@osdl.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060327195905.7f666cb5.akpm@osdl.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.10i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Mon, 27 Mar 2006 @ 19:59 -0800, Andrew Morton said: > Much porkiness. > > /proc/meminfo is very useful for obtaining a top-level view of where all > the memory's gone to. I'd tentatively say that your options are to put up > with the swapping or find a new mail client. I use mutt for my email, and I have the same issue on a 1GB system. I really wish we could put an upper limit on what file cache can use. I understand the original poster was running a lot of pork, but you don't have to and still see a problem with swapping. Even running KDE my total application memory most of the time is 300MB or less on a machine with 1GB of memory. I shouldn't be suffering from swap storms. For example, my normal working set of programs eats about 250MB of memory. If I also start a job running to something like tag some mp3s, copy a CD, or just process a lot of files, it only takes a few minutes before performance becomes unacceptable. If you are doing some work where you switch among several applications frequently, the pigginess of file cache becomes a serious problem. Isn't that bad behavior by any measure? -- shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." -- Andrew Jackson]