Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265084AbUD3Ifr (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 04:35:47 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265110AbUD3Ifr (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 04:35:47 -0400 Received: from smtp106.mail.sc5.yahoo.com ([66.163.169.226]:27471 "HELO smtp106.mail.sc5.yahoo.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S265084AbUD3Ifq (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 04:35:46 -0400 Message-ID: <4091FD2C.7010307@yahoo.com.au> Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 17:15:56 +1000 From: Nick Piggin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040401 Debian/1.6-4 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tim Connors CC: Horst von Brand , Jeff Garzik , Andrew Morton , brettspamacct@fastclick.com, Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: ~500 megs cached yet 2.6.5 goes into swap hell References: <40904A84.2030307@yahoo.com.au> <200404292001.i3TK1BYe005147@eeyore.valparaiso.cl> <4091F38C.3010400@yahoo.com.au> 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: 1349 Lines: 37 Tim Connors wrote: > On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Nick Piggin wrote: > >>In our memory manager, there is a point where often used >>"file cache" (ie. unmapped cache) is considered preferable >>to unused or little used "application memory" (mapped >>memory). > > > Sure - and indeed I have current swap usage (now that I am not doing > anything) of 300MB - that's good because I am not using whatever's in > there. > > >>I missed the description of your exact problem... was it in >>this thread somewhere? Testing 2.6 would be appreciated if >>possible too. > > > http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0404.3/1033.html > http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0404.3/1394.html > > In short: I have 512MB RAM. The files I am reading are read over NFS, Ah, thanks for the description. 2.6 has a problem with NFS filesystems that would cause symptoms like yours. I'm not sure whether 2.4 has something similar or not. You can probably expect a fix for 2.6.6 but I'm not sure if there is a patch that has been agreed upon yet. In short, there probably isn't much point testing 2.6 right now. - 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/