Messages in this thread |  | | | From | Bill Metzenthen <> | | Subject | My memory is rusty | | Date | Sun, 19 Apr 1998 13:03:08 +1000 (EST) |
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Some time recently (I can't remember exactly when :), I think it was P. J. Plauger who observed that modern operating systems rust. I other words after using the things for months it is often necessary to re-install the things to get the performance back to a satisfactory level. This seems to be a complaint against MicroSoft operating systems and their ilk.
Somewhere in the 2.1.xx series (maybe 2.1.4x, but I'm not sure) of Linux kernels I noticed that rapid rusting was setting in. After using the system for a time, which could be less than an hour, the performance would become very sluggish due to swapping and only rebooting seems to restore system performance.
Of course there were a few disastrous kernels around 2.1.90, but we'll forget about those...
I have a feeling that the rusting problem has become worse as the kernel versions have progressed but it's only recently that I've started trying to get some measure of the effect so I can't be sure.
I've recently tried a few things to see if the cause of the rusting might become apparent but before I really roll my sleeves up it seems like a good idea to ask here. It's likely that someone already knows the answer and/or can point out something silly I am doing...
Don't laugh, but my system is currently and 80486 with 8 Mbyte of RAM. My observation of most messages which mention configuration is that most people have much more RAM than this and might not be seeing the problem.
To rule out hardware problems, I compiled and installed 2.0.33 and observe that the rusting is either much slower or doesn't exist with that kernel.
Cheers, Bill
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