linux-kernel - Re: swapping in 2.6.24-rc5-git3

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Message-ID: <20071217171532.GK6979@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
Date:	Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:15:32 +0100
From:	Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
To:	Lukas Hejtmanek <xhejtman@....muni.cz>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: swapping in 2.6.24-rc5-git3

  Hello,

> does /proc/sys/vm/swappiness still work as expected? 
> # /proc/sys/vm# cat swappiness 
> 0
  I think yes. 0 swappiness doesn't mean "no swapping at all". From the
code in shrink_active_list() it seems that it just decreases likeliness
of removing pages of mmaped files (i.e., also executables loaded in memory).

> but scp-ing 2GB file causes many processes are swapped out due to increase of
> the file cache size. Why? This is totally catastrophic behaviour on the desktop.
  Yes, that's quite unpleasant. How much memory do you have? If you have
some time, you can try playing with the code in mm/vmscan.c to find out
what's happening in your case (putting some debugging output in
shrink_active_list() etc...

> Is there a way to avoid it except turning off the swap?
  Currently, I'm not aware of any way...

										Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>
SuSE CR Labs
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