Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263467AbTKFJQ2 (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Nov 2003 04:16:28 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263468AbTKFJQ2 (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Nov 2003 04:16:28 -0500 Received: from smtp2.su.se ([130.237.93.212]:6622 "EHLO smtp2.su.se") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263467AbTKFJQV (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Nov 2003 04:16:21 -0500 Message-ID: <3FAA1163.8040005@it.su.se> Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 10:16:19 +0100 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jerry_Lundstr=F6m?= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031024 Debian/1.5-2 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Wee Teck Neo Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Over used cache memory? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1618 Lines: 36 Wee Teck Neo wrote: > But seems like the swap space is begin used because of "insufficent" > free memory. I'm not sure if there is a performance slow down. > no no no, this is the way linux works. Memory from programs that are not accessed alot are put into the swap so that the not-so-offen-used memory can be used by other programs or the cache to speed up everything. When that program later access the swaped memory it will load it up and remove some of the cache and after a while it will put it back into the swap (dont have any numbers on how long till it will but trust linux, it does it very good). I wouldnt worry at all about those numbers, they are very common in 1gig server systems and ive worked with alot of them, even 4gig mem systems use the swap, thats what its for... If you are worried about preformance with memory and such after all configure you systems like this: If you use IDE have the system disk on one IDE channel and a standalone swap disk on another IDE channel (not master or slave way but ide0 or ide1). For SCSI you can just put the swap on a seperate disk. Doing this will speed up alot of stuff since linux have 100% access to the swap when it needs too, it doesnt have to share the IO to the disk with another partition. Otherwise Id just say, dont worry about it... Linux knows what its doing... hope it helps... - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/