On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> I will agree that if the guy (not Guy, tizmo, ohh never mind) has 95MB
> of free RAM, there is no reason to swap anything out. It's just that a
> normal system has quite a few things loaded into memory that are never
> accessed. Swapping these things out can produce free RAM to be used for
> Disk caching.
if you insist on answering the other question - then this is not the
descrption of a 'normal' system. its the description that accesses lots of
files or runs many processes. note that these days, quite a few people buy
enough RAM to make swap space usage negligle - for home usage.
> I am not sure Linux knows how to do that (though - assuming that your
> RAM gets full every now and then, that will happen anyway), but I am
> trying to pointout that, if my system allocated 128MB of memory, and it
> has exactly 128MB of RAM, the best allocation is NOT 128MB Ram full,
> swap 0K full.
actually, the best allocation is very close to that, but allocation is not
done at a single moment - it's a gradual process. when the system begins
to get low on RAM (and ONLY then) - it considers using swap space.
however, this is a hunch - i didn't consult the kernel's sources to verify
that - yet...
what i did see in the sources, is that the system pre-allocates pools of
memory pages for usage by important parts of the system (e.g. device
driver interrupt handlers). this is done because it's a bad idea to begin
swapping while handling an interrupt.
ok. time i'd learn to stop poking my nose in. anyone here even remotely
interested in such information?
guy
"For world domination - press 1,
or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy
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