PID TT MAJFL MINFL TRS DRS SIZE SWAP SHRD LIB DT COMMAND
273 ? 23025 13305755 536 12728 16392 3128 696 580 3125 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -dpi 100 -auth /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-a00263
20242 ? 21044 28586 688 13592 101M6 89840 864 1612 3316 netscape
The point is really that about this time, all my RAM (64MB) and swap
(100MB) was full, only a couple of k remained.
When this was so, a big ftp download (using ncftp, not Netscape) kept
stopping. Not cutting off or anything, just stopping. I had to keep
killing pppd and restarting it, then rerunning ncftp to carry on where
it got cut off.
I don't know if this worked just because a little memory was briefly
released back to the network system or not. I do know the download was
halting every couple of minutes until I realised swap was full, and it
was fine after I killed Netscape. It's possible the memory shortage
affected the TCP flow control stuff because of the delays finding free
pages, and that TCP didn't recover once it had got the pages.
I also noticed that X paused occasionally for about 30 seconds. The
mouse pointer, and everything visible were frozen. Then the pointer
would jump every few seconds, and eventually start moving smoothly.
Various windows would catch up with their displays in a similar way.
This was exactly the behaviour I would expect from heavy swapping, but
there was no disk activity during the pauses. There was some disk
activity just as things started getting smooth.
-- Jamie Lokier
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