I'm using the kernel-sources-2.3.99-3 from the redhat rawhide distribution
and compiled my own kernel.
I've read some message about kswapd in the new 2.3 kernels and wondered if
the the behavious of kswapd on my system is regular.
(Using a Dual Celeron 366 machine with 256 MB)
I noticed first of all, that kswapd uses quite a bit of processor according
to top when the system is loaded. I just fired up the system and started 2
unrar processes of both uncompressing about 600 MB. Free and ps aux give me
the following stats:
----[ free ]-------------------------------
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 254756 252288 2468 0 1296 209016
-/+ buffers/cache: 41976 212780
Swap: 72252 1268 70984
----[ ps aux (subset) ]--------------------
root 2 20.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 12:15 2:51 [kswapd]
melkor 1244 68.0 0.5 2200 1508 pts/0 RN 12:25 2:54 unrar x arc1.rar
melkor 1409 59.4 0.5 2200 1512 pts/2 RN 12:27 1:30 unrar x arc2.rar
-------------------------------------------
I'm not sure why this happens. The system is a bit sluggish but that should
be reasonable because quite some effort is being made (uncompressing and
lots of data being written to disk). But I wonder why kswapd is constantly
taking up so much processor time.
Secondly after about 1.5 days of uptime, kswapd on my 2.3.99 system has used
way more cpu time than kswapd on my 2.2.14 system.
----[ ps aux (2.3.99,subset) ]-------------
root 1 0.0 0.0 1120 68 ? S Apr04 0:08 init
root 2 3.1 0.0 0 0 ? DW Apr04 76:59 [kswapd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Apr04 1:31 [kflushd]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Apr04 0:14 [kupdate]
root 533 0.0 0.0 1172 168 ? S Apr04 0:14 syslogd -m 0
named 597 0.0 0.2 3032 660 ? S Apr04 0:14 named -u named
root 5263 0.0 0.0 3336 76 ? S 03:16 0:00 smbd -D
root 5271 0.3 0.3 2260 880 ? S 03:16 1:45 nmbd -D
root 5272 0.0 0.0 1820 4 ? S 03:16 0:00 nmbd -D
----[ ps aux (2.2.14,subset) ]-------------
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Mar24 1:59 [kflushd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Mar24 2:11 [kupdate]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Mar24 0:00 [kpiod]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Mar24 1:46 [kswapd]
root 415 0.0 0.1 1152 280 ? S Mar24 0:04 syslogd -m 0
-------------------------------------------
True the system currently running 2.3.99 is doing more stuff, but I'm not
sure that justifies the huge difference compared to 2.2.14.
I'm thus wondering if this kswapd behaviour is normal, and if not, how I can
fix it.
Thomas
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 07 2000 - 21:00:16 EST