Re: [PATCH] Patch to Memory Subsystem ... (Needed?)

Re: [PATCH] Patch to Memory Subsystem ... (Needed?)

[Rik van Riel]

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Karl J. Runge wrote:

> Forgive my intrusion, I have been using Linux for about 5 years, and
> am a decent C programmer, but certainly not a kernel hacker
> (however, at least I am not afraid to at _look_ at the kernel code). 

I guess that qualifies you as someone to pay decent
attention to :)

[SNIP dual ppro/64M 128M swap half full is sluggish]

> Is this inescapable because I am that far into swap?

I don't know how much swap I/O is going on, but it certainly
shouldn't be as bad as you describe.

I know my 72MB machine feels great when GIMP is 120 MB
in swap and paging a lot (not thashing though).

OTOH, if the working set of your machine is larger than
the amount of physical memory you have, I guess the
machine will be thrashing...

> I am looking to buy more RAM, but I still feel something is not
> right.  I have used kernels 2.0.35, 2.1.88, 2.1.112, and now
> 2.1.127. Perhaps it was better in 2.0.x but I cannot be sure (that
> was some time ago). I would be willing to experiment with swap
> parameters my setup, perhaps via some sysctl interface to kswapd? Is
> there such a beast? 

There is documentation in Documentation/sysctl/, but
it is currently out of date because Linus is ignoring
the patch I sent him.

> I have noticed Solaris recently added something that distinguishes
> between file I/O and system I/O at: 
> 
>  http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/performance/priority_paging.html

I'll check it out.

cheers,

Rik -- slowly getting used to dvorak kbd layout...
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| Linux memory management tour guide.        H.H.vanRiel@phys.uu.nl |
| Scouting Vries cubscout leader.      http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ |
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