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

Nick Piggin
2004-04-30T08:35:47Z

Tim Connors wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Nick Piggin wrote:
>
>>In our memory manager, there is a point where often used
>>"file cache" (ie. unmapped cache) is considered preferable
>>to unused or little used "application memory" (mapped
>>memory).
>
>
> Sure - and indeed I have current swap usage (now that I am not doing
> anything) of 300MB - that's good because I am not using whatever's in
> there.
>
>
>>I missed the description of your exact problem... was it in
>>this thread somewhere? Testing 2.6 would be appreciated if
>>possible too.
>
>
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0404.3/1033.html
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0404.3/1394.html
>
> In short: I have 512MB RAM. The files I am reading are read over NFS,

Ah, thanks for the description.

2.6 has a problem with NFS filesystems that would cause symptoms
like yours. I'm not sure whether 2.4 has something similar or not.
You can probably expect a fix for 2.6.6 but I'm not sure if there
is a patch that has been agreed upon yet.

In short, there probably isn't much point testing 2.6 right now.