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    SubjectRe: OOM kills if swappiness set to 0, swap storms otherwise
    Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com> wrote:
    >
    > I am simply trying to run a Gnome desktop (Gnome 2.14, Evolution,
    > Firefox, gtk-gnutella usually open) without swapping or getting OOM
    > killed.
    >
    > I have to set the swappiness to 0 or else I get swap storms when simply
    > browsing the web and reading my mail. I think this is insane as I have
    > 512MB of RAM. It seems as if the kernel will OOM kill firefox rather
    > than shrink the file cache!

    No, there is little pagecache left.

    > What is the problem here? Is the modern Linux desktop really too
    > bloated to run in half a gig of RAM, or is the kernel overzealous with
    > its OOM killing?

    Looks like it.

    > ...
    >
    > rlrevell@mindpipe:~$ vmstat 1
    > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
    > r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
    > 2 0 248992 5612 4072 75268 3 2 41 49 12 33 82 4 14 1
    > 0 0 248992 5364 4084 75300 0 0 0 128 1273 640 34 3 63 0
    > 0 0 248992 5356 4084 75464 0 0 0 0 1257 611 23 4 73 0
    > 0 0 248992 5356 4084 75496 0 0 0 0 1292 635 21 2 77 0
    > 0 0 248992 5356 4084 75532 0 0 0 0 1277 599 22 3 75 0
    > 0 0 248992 5356 4084 75532 0 0 0 0 1270 610 23 2 75 0
    > 1 0 248992 5232 4092 75564 0 0 0 200 1274 596 21 2 77 0
    > 0 0 248992 5232 4092 75564 0 0 0 0 1280 648 22 2 76 0
    > 0 0 248992 5108 4092 75696 0 0 0 0 1296 621 21 4 75 0

    70-odd MB in pagecache. Probably a lot of this is mmapped into process
    pagetables and by setting swappiness==0 you've basically told the kernel
    that this memory is to be preserved.

    > rlrevell 1792 4.1 37.9 320340 166724 ? Sl Mar21 353:33 evolution --component=mail
    > rlrevell 2298 9.2 18.9 200556 83112 ? Sl 15:16 30:55 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -a firefox
    > rlrevell 1794 0.0 2.1 92704 9344 ? Sl Mar21 0:47 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-1.6 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_DataServer_InterfaceCheck --oaf-ior-fd=41
    > rlrevell 1805 0.0 0.6 65236 2740 ? Sl Mar21 0:06 /usr/lib/evolution/2.6/evolution-alarm-notify --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Calendar_AlarmNotify_Factory:2.6 --oaf-ior-fd=43
    > root 2295 70.3 4.5 58160 19908 tty7 Ss+ Mar18 9207:34 /usr/bin/X :0 -br -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7
    > rlrevell 2759 0.0 1.0 57716 4832 ? Ssl Mar18 2:48 nautilus --sm-config-prefix /nautilus-kFkhxG/ --sm-client-id 106281f446000113283283500000043730002 --screen 0 --no-default-window
    > rlrevell 2749 0.0 0.5 33720 2404 ? Sl Mar18 3:09 /usr/lib/control-center/gnome-settings-daemon --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_SettingsDaemon --oaf-ior-fd=25

    Much porkiness.

    /proc/meminfo is very useful for obtaining a top-level view of where all
    the memory's gone to. I'd tentatively say that your options are to put up
    with the swapping or find a new mail client.

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