[2.1.130-3] Page cache DEFINATELY too persistant... feature?

Benjamin Redelings I (bredelin@ucsd.edu)
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 21:49:51 -0800

Under certain circumstances, 2.1.130-3 simply doesn't shrink the page
cache, and I get situations like this:

telomere:~> cat freesample
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 63472 61812 1660 6972 25664
22968
-/+ buffers/cache: 13180 50292
Swap: 34236 24612 9624

Is this not absurd, or am I missing something? The swap finally went up
to 30 Mb, before decreasing. On exiting the installer, swap went down
to 12Mb.
I was simply updating my debian system over the web, which consisted of
downloading 11 Mb of compressed archives, uncompressing them, and then
installing them. Basically the only programs running were Netscape and
the installer, and various other tidbits like 'mkfontdir'.

Usually very little is swapped out... maybe a few Mb at most. The
upgrade took a lot longer than usual because of all the swapping and
paging.

Any explanations? Is this a feature?

-benRI

-- 
If E. Coli was a computer:
 "OPERON.DLL: Mutation in LACTOSE.DLL.  Entire system halted."


Benjamin Redelings I       <><      http://sdcc13.ucsd.edu/~bredelin


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