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

Tim Connors
2004-04-29T01:51:09Z

Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> said on Thu, 29 Apr 2004 10:54:36 +1000:
> Wakko Warner wrote:
> >>I don't know. What if you have some huge application that only
> >>runs once per day for 10 minutes? Do you want it to be consuming
> >>100MB of your memory for the other 23 hours and 50 minutes for
> >>no good reason?
> >
> >
> > I keep soffice open all the time. The box in question has 512mb of ram.
> > This is one app, even though I use it infrequently, would prefer that it
> > never be swapped out. Mainly when I want to use it, I *WANT* it now (ie not
> > waiting for it to come back from swap)
> >
> > This is just my oppinion. I personally feel that cache should use available
> > memory, not already used memory (swapping apps out for more cache).
> >
>
> On the other hand, suppose that with soffice resident the entire
> time, you don't have enough memory to cache an entire kernel tree
> (or video you are editing, or whatever).

For the kernel example, I only ever compile once before rebooting[1]
:)

This I think is the kind of thing that a kernel will never
automatically detect. This *must* be in the hands of the
administrator, who will know what they are doing (hopefully).

[1] I have never had enough memory on machines that I use to compile
kernels, to cache an entire tree anyway -- I'd much rather mozilla use
it than a cache which will never be reused

--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
[transporting bed]... across several suburbs and a large salt water
harbour. Well, they thoughtfully bridged the harbour in the 1930s, so
the problem was actually transporting it across several suburbs and a
long single span bridge. -- Hipatia