From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from max.phys.uu.nl (max.phys.uu.nl [131.211.32.73]) by kvack.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id FAA11682 for ; Thu, 12 Nov 1998 05:02:33 -0500 Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 09:48:26 +0100 (CET) From: Rik van Riel Reply-To: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: [PATCH] Patch to Memory Subsystem ... (Needed?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: "Karl J. Runge" Cc: Linux MM List-ID: 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 There is documentation in Documentation/sysctl/, but it is currently out of date because Linus is ignoring the patch I sent him.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... +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Linux memory management tour guide. H.H.vanRiel@phys.uu.nl | | Scouting Vries cubscout leader. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- This is a majordomo managed list. To unsubscribe, send a message with the body 'unsubscribe linux-mm me@address' to: majordomo@kvack.org