[ale] Can someone help me understand memory usage?

[esoteric at 3times25.net (Geoffrey)]

Jeff Hubbs wrote:


> Yeah, but 2.4 kernels are "greedier" than 2.2 and before.  As I 
> understand it, you can no longer view gobs and gobs of free RAM as a 
> sign of system health.  Rather, the OS stakes out big swaths of 
> otherwise unused RAM and hangs onto it.  And, eventually, it will start 
> filling up swap.  However, this is not so much a sign of impending 
> meltdown as the kernel going, "hm, here's a section of RAM that hasn't 
> been used in hours; I'm throwing it to the swap file."

I don't know how 2.4 kernels have changed, but either I don't understand 
what you've just said, or I think it's a poor direction to head.  The 
LAST thing the OS should do is use swap.  It should look for unused 
memory and take advantage of it.  Using swap is kinda like you've got a 
bus load of folks and their's no more room, so you take the bicycle off 
the roof rack and hand it to the next guy trying to get on the bus. 
AND, the bus then stays behind the guy on the bike.  Point being, using 
swap slows down everything.

Did I misunderstand your statement, or are you saying the OS will use up 
memory quickly because of the allocated chunk sizes, therefore hit the 
swap much sooner than it used to???


-- 
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net

I didn't have to buy my radio from a specific company to listen
to FM, why doesn't that apply to the Internet (anymore...)?


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