From: jlnance@unity.ncsu.edu
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 08:40:31 -0500
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Over used cache memory?
Message-ID: <20031106134031.GA2720@ncsu.edu>
References: <BAY4-F41WYf5UPHvAo10001c90f@hotmail.com> <3FAA1056.6020003@aitel.hist.no>
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On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 10:11:50AM +0100, Helge Hafting wrote:
> 
> Yes - _use_ the memory for something else. 
> 1. All unused memory will be put to good use as cache.
> 2. Memory is taken from the cache whenever you need it for
>   something else, so (1) is not a problem at all.

This is the way it is susposed to work, but I am working on a problem
where this does not seem to be happening.  We have a machine with 6G
of ram.  It reads some huge files (~5G) and cache fills up.  Then
it starts to process the data and goes into a swap storm because it
can not get any memory for the process because it all is in the cache.
If you run top, you see kswapd stuck at the top.

If anyone has any ideas about this, I would love to hear them.

Thanks,

Jim
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