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Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 16:45:28 -0500
From: war <war@starband.net>
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To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois?= Cami <stilgar2k@wanadoo.fr>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Swap
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I completely agree with you.
p3/866/1024MB here.
Everything seems much faster; and I can run 512 processes of varying memory
"weights" without a hitch.

Fran?ois Cami wrote:

> I don't understand why it should be better with swap then... I mean,
> my comp seems to run so much faster (it doesn't take time to switch
> from one app to another, i mean) *without* swap.
> And I see no benefits to having an active swap, other than making my
> hard drive work harder.
>
> comp is PIII933/512MB on ATA100
> kernel is 2.4.14 with XFS patch.
>
> Fran?ois
>
> war wrote:
>
> > Well, without the swap, everything seems to be about 100% more responsive when
> > I execute any task.
> > I see how it works now.
> >
> > James A Sutherland wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On Sunday 18 November 2001 9:12 pm, war wrote:
> >>
> >>>It is amazing that I could run all of that stuff, because:
> >>>
> >>>When I have swap on, and if I run all of those programs, 200-400MB of
> >>>swap is used.
> >>>
> >>Yep. There's a reason for that: the kernel is *ALWAYS* able to swap pages out
> >>to disk - even without "swap space". Disabling swapspace simply forces the
> >>kernel to swap out more code, since it cannot swap out any data.
> >>
> >>(This is why you can still get "disk thrashing" without any swap - in fact,
> >>it's more likely in this case than it is with some swap added - you are just
> >>forcing your binaries to take more of the swapping load instead.)
> >>
> >>So: with swapspace, the kernel swaps out a few hundred Mb of unused data, to
> >>make room for more code. Without it, the kernel is forced to swap out code
> >>pages instead. The big news here is...?
> >>
> >>James.
> >>
> >
> > -
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> >

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