Messages in this thread | | | From | (Linus Torvalds) | Subject | Re: 2.1.91 swap performance: jerky. | Date | 28 Mar 1998 01:17:32 GMT |
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In article <351C2E91.5C23733D@pobox.com>, mlord <mlord@pobox.com> wrote: > >Tried it. Less dramatic swings in swapping behaviour >than before, but still leaves more free memory than I'd >expect.. 4-5MB "free" at all times, despite continuous swapping.
This is intentional. The background swapping tries to swap out enough stuff that we're never really low on memory (and that means that it tries to keep at least one 128kB _contiguous_ area free, for example - which in turn tends to indicate a few megs of real free memory).
>(mind y'all, running four xboard's with "two machines" set >for each is a pretty heavy test of swapping..).
xboard isn't exactly known for being light, no.
>Either with or without, interactive response still "feels" okay, >considering the system load.
Good. This is actually the major aim of the 2.1.90 code: to keep the system interactive "feel" the right way, by having a background swapout that is fairly aggressive but really stays in the background (and it is designed to be aggressive enough that it should hopefully never get to the state where the machine gets so tight on free memory that it starts to feel unresponsive).
So yes, the numbers reported by "free" may be jerky, but I hope the machine itself doesn't actually _feel_ too jerky..
Linus
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