Re: ~500 megs cached yet 2.6.5 goes into swap hell

Hugh Dickins
2004-05-07T20:02:52Z

On Fri, 7 May 2004, Timothy Miller wrote:
> >
> >>>Perhaps what we really want is "swap_back_in" script? That way you
> >>>could do "updatedb; swap_back_in" in cron and be happy.
> >>
> >>swapoff -a; swapon -a
>
> Wouldn't this also be a problem if you are using more memory than you
> have physical RAM?

On 2.4 it certainly would be a problem (hang with others OOM-killed).

On 2.6 it shouldn't be a problem: the swapoff may fail upfront if
there's way too little memory, or it may get itself OOM-killed if
it runs out on the way, but it ought not to upset other tasks.

But of course, Pavel is right that it does nothing for file backed.

Hugh