On 4 Aug 2005, at 12:44, Ole Tange wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Niall O Broin wrote:
>>> I don't think that's quite right. When you think about it, it doesn't
>> make sense. Free memory is used for disk cache because that's a good
>> use of memory, avoiding possible future disk I/O. Swapping idle memory
>> to disk (causing I/O) to avoid possible future disk I/O doesn't sound
>> like a good investment.
>> Read the Linux Kernel Mailing List on swappiness if you want the full
> story (Hint: There is no agreement on the issue).
>http://kerneltrap.org/node/3000
I must read that out of interest but I'm not surprised about there
being no agreement. Memory usage in the kernel is a black art. Somebody
must understand it, but they're few and far between. I know somebody
here asked Alan Cox a question about it once, and he was unable to give
a satisfactory answer. That's worrying. The issue seems to be that it's
very expensive to ask the kernel exactly what it's doing with memory.
Niall
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