First off, I am running 2.1.91. P166MMX. 32mb ram. 64mb swap. The events
in question occur when I am running pine, mirror in the background, tcpdump, 2
pppstats, fetchmail, along with 6 bashes.
> In article <351C2E91.5C23733D@pobox.com>, mlord <mlord@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> >Tried it. Less dramatic swings in swapping behaviour
> >than before, but still leaves more free memory than I'd
> >expect.. 4-5MB "free" at all times, despite continuous swapping.
>
> This is intentional. The background swapping tries to swap out enough
> stuff that we're never really low on memory (and that means that it
> tries to keep at least one 128kB _contiguous_ area free, for example -
> which in turn tends to indicate a few megs of real free memory).
Why? Why do the swap out ahead of time? Then the kernel needs to swap in the
swapped out code. I think the swapout should happen in the memory allocation
code. Or, the swap out stragety needs to be redone. Too often, I see
currently active programs being swapped out, only to have to be immediately
swapped back in.
> >Either with or without, interactive response still "feels" okay,
> >considering the system load.
>
> Good. This is actually the major aim of the 2.1.90 code: to keep the
> system interactive "feel" the right way, by having a background swapout
> that is fairly aggressive but really stays in the background (and it is
> designed to be aggressive enough that it should hopefully never get to
> the state where the machine gets so tight on free memory that it starts
> to feel unresponsive).
Yes, the system is be more responsive than 2.1.91pre1. But still, it is
aggravating having things swapped out while they are being used(the bash
shells).
Adam
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