linux-kernel - Linux 2.6.31 - very swap-happy with plenty of free RAM

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Message-ID: <c0c067900911172356n2717ce9dn8a4231345903fde6@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:56:57 -0500
From:	Dan Merillat <dan.merillat@...il.com>
To:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Linux 2.6.31 - very swap-happy with plenty of free RAM

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 1  1      0 774404  49644 1713932    0    0     8    44 2680 5105 23 42  0 35
 2  1      0 774900  49448 1713668    0    0     8    28 2870 5101 22 41  0 36

swapon /dev/vg1/swap

 2  2  34460 770808  47824 1709852    0 34460   952 34472 3174 5601 21 48  2 29
 1  1 129716 759904  47460 1699364    0 95316   272 95532 3093 5641 16 49  7 29
 1  4 196728 756680  47436 1693616   64 67080    92 67104 2980 5569 18 49 24  8
 2  1 246212 754076  47396 1689240   32 49652   220 49760 3241 5405 19 51  1 29
 2  3 282404 791648  47272 1686252   16 36284   240 36392 3088 6281 18 52  9 22
 1  4 299464 847200  47260 1685208  324 17296   324 17320 3190 6199 23 46  0 30
 2  5 302316 854384  47256 1685884  944 3804  1948  3812 2723 5297 20 45  5 31
11  3 303436 861700  47384 1686400 1188 1900  2084  1912 2615 4593 21 51  9 20
swapoff -a
 2  6 301740 863436  47384 1687048 1860    4  2368   128 2541 4591 21 63  0 15
 3  4 300076 865916  47384 1687604 1672    0  2120   156 2673 5208 19 63  0 18
 2  5 297676 866288  47380 1687988 2396    0  2668   188 2632 5259 17 70  2 12
 2  2 295556 866784  47380 1687956 2352    0  2352     0 2621 5316 16 72  9  4
 5  5 293168 867156  47384 1688120 2344    0  2344    20 2651 5469 18 79  0  4
 2  4 291108 870504  47396 1688260 2036    0  2172   160 2381 4817 15 67  0 18
 3  3 289416 870612  47400 1688476 2028    0  2260   148 2602 5214 18 69  0 13
 3  3 287528 871928  47400 1688556 1928    0  2136     0 2470 5096 19 68  3 10
 2  4 285740 873896  47408 1688892 2352    0  2764   172 2490 5194 18 66  0 17

1.7gb of disk cache, 750 meg of free RAM, and it swaps out 300meg in a
matter of seconds when given access to a swapfile, then thrashes the
disk like crazy because that RAM was actively in use. From an
interactivity standpoint the machine is unusable - 1-2 second pauses
on mouse movement, 10-15 seconds for the window manager to change
window focus, keypresses take 1-2 seconds to show up, etc.  When I
issue a swapoff it takes 10-15  minutes for it to slowly pull it all
back in - once it's done I run fine.

The machine has 4gb of RAM (64bit), and runs 3 VMware VMs with a total
of 1024mb allocated to them.   VMware uses file-backed RAM (for some
ungodly stupid reason) which is on a separate spindle (/dev/sdb) from
swap (/dev/sda).  I've got one VM pointed to a file-backed RAM on a
tmpfs (512mb) that's probably got quite a bit of memory activity.

The other main RAM hogs are the usual suspects - firefox, Xorg,
thunderbird, openoffice, pidgin, etc, the usual junk on a busy Linux
desktop.

All the sysctl tuneables should be defaults, there's no distro or
local changes to any vm settings (mmap_min_addr=0 for Wine,
shmmax=256mb, some ipv6 tweaks)

Ideas on where to start looking?  If this is a vmware issue I'll take
it to them.

View attachment "config-2.6.31.txt" of type "text/plain" (74662 bytes)

View attachment "proc_vmstat.txt" of type "text/plain" (1526 bytes)