Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264972AbUFAKOf (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Jun 2004 06:14:35 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264979AbUFAKOf (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Jun 2004 06:14:35 -0400 Received: from c3p0.cc.swin.edu.au ([136.186.1.30]:38667 "EHLO swin.edu.au") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264972AbUFAKOd (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Jun 2004 06:14:33 -0400 To: "Buddy Lumpkin" Cc: "'John Bradford'" , "'Michael Brennan'" , , From: Tim Connors Subject: Re: why swap at all? In-reply-to: References: <200405312029.i4VKTCZ0000596@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk> X-Face: "0\RuOFb6AcQ}B_F/^%;;AmS%>"qr*^0t%eriBMe_x]B7&@b8_\i Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 20:13:59 +1000 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1388 Lines: 27 "Buddy Lumpkin" said on Tue, 1 Jun 2004 02:38:42 -0700: > If I know in advance that filesystem I/O will eventually fill physical > memory with filesystem pages (pagecache), then why would I allow file system > I/O to force out anonymous pages on the system? Also, why wake up an > expensive algorithm (kswapd) that walks all pages in physical memory in > order to determine which pages are "Least Recently Used" on a system where ... Incidentally, what happens when kswapd becomes a zombie? I've seen this a few times, and I am currently posting on a machine that has been up for 15 days, and which oopsed 10 or so days ago (something to do with nfs, but don't worry about that - the machine is running 2.4.20, and is not exactly up-to-date), killing kswapd. But I don't notice anything at all different about how the system is behaving. However, I haven't been doing much more than running emacs and mozilla recently - I haven't been running my visualisation software that typically stresses the VM beyond usefullness. -- TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX. - 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/