Couldn't get a free page.....

Jeremy A. Shaw (ja-shaw@crh1187.urh.uiuc.edu)
Thu, 18 Apr 1996 12:32:36 -0500 (CDT)

I am running 1.3.90. I just upgraded from 1.3.45. I have noticed a
significant increase in the ability to compile the kernel and do something
else at the same time. [For example, loading X and running xv and
compiling the kernel all at the same time, is now at an acceptable rate, as
opposed to the painfully slow response in 1.3.45].

BUT, I have been getting numerous [about 100 in on a few hours of use]
messages saying "Couldn't get a free page.....". Everything seems to be
running fine however.

Here is the some information that may be useful:

crh1187:~> free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 6628 6536 92 2396 84
-/+ buffers: 6452 176
Swap: 55908 7404 48504
MemTotal: 6
MemFree: 0
MemShared: 2
Buffers: 0
Cached: 2
SwapTotal: 54
SwapFree: 47

[Shift-Scroll Lock]
2048 pages of RAM
63 free pages
391 reserved pages
602 shared pages

If it hit [Shift-Scroll Lock] multiple times, the reserved pages
stays about the same but the free pages [and shared pages] jump all
over, in a period of five seconds, free will jump from 33 to 600 to 200 to
400 and back to 34. [not exact numbers]. This data was taken while
compiling the kernel [1.3.91]. [free pages tends to stay around 30-40, with
the exception of the huges jumps].

I tend to get the "Can't get a free page..." when running X.
Under X when things are activily doing something:
2048 pages of RAM
34 free pages
391 reserved pages
[800-900] shared pages

When X is just sitting there, things go back to the previous stats.

jeremy shaw.

[BTW, I am running on a 486sx/25 with 8 megs ram and 55 megs swap. Originally
a Slackware 2.8 installation which has been upgraded to support ELF
binaries. I am using procops-0.99a. And about a 1.5 weeks ago, my
compiler spontaneously decided to stop compiling c++ programs but would
compile c fine. So I went to tsx-11 and downloaded a bunch of new libs
and bins till it worked. So I am basically using the lastest version of
GCC with the BETA libs and stuff].