linux-kernel - Re: Hardcore trashing without any swap

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Message-ID: <20100611131652.053afebd@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Date:	Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:16:52 +0100
From:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To:	László Monda <laci@...da.hu>
Cc:	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Hardcore trashing without any swap

On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:10:33 +0200
László Monda <laci@...da.hu> wrote:

> Hi List,
> 
> The problem I'm facing with is very simple, yet extremely irritating
> in nature.  I have a laptop with 4G RAM and I don't use any swap.
> Whenever the RAM is full my system keeps trashing.  This makes X and
> SSH completely unresponsive for about a hour then a bunch of processes
> gets killed and it's usable again.
> 
> How is possible that my system is trashing even though I don't use any swap?

Because you don't have any swap. Its having to dump stuff it doesn't want
to like bits of applications that it can retrieve back from disk.

> I'd expect the kernel to immediately kill the largest process without
> any trashing so I could continue my work right after the event.  How
> is it possible to configure?

It isn't.

However if you want to avoid overcommit and thrashing play with 

/proc/sys/vm/overcommit*
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