RE: new memory = more swap?

[Kevin Krieser]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the memory manager in the early
2.4 kernels worked best with plenty of extra swap.  But, because of many
complaints, it was revamped.

One of the optimizations that, though it was helpful in certain cases,
caused worse problems in other cases, such as low ram or low swap
environments.

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Felix Miata
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 12:00 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: new memory = more swap?

Craig Thomas wrote:
> Thank you.  After reading chapter 7, I think I don't need more swap 
> space.  Below is the output of free when running (but hardly using) 
> all the apps I generally run at once:
>          total       used       free     shared    buffers
>
> cached
> Mem:        385032     379860       5172          0      11840
> 132144
> -/+ buffers/cache:     235876     149156
> Swap:       514072      11848     502224
> This means I am using very little of my swap space and therefore I 
> don't need more.  Is this right or am I off base?

Swap = 2X installed RAM is an anachronism dating back to when memory
cost $50US or more per megabyte and only servers routinely had more than
16 megabytes. Ordinary workstation users won't often find very much of
the total available in use. My KDE box up 53 days with 128M of installed
RAM currently shows 57396 of 522072 total swap in use.