[cod] Swap Memory

Neil @ TWA Studios neil at twastudios.com
Mon Sep 27 17:50:19 EDT 2004


Good feedback.

Should also be noted that if you find your swap being utilized too
frequently, it's probably a safe bet that some additional RAM is needed.

--Neil


-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan C. Gordon [mailto:icculus at clutteredmind.org] 
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 4:47 PM
To: cod at icculus.org
Subject: Re: [cod] Swap Memory


>         the current Linux kernels allocate swap tbh so I cant give you
>         a concrete
>         answer but its easy enough to find out, just on your server 

Linux likes to over commit memory and gamble that not all of the
allocated memory will actually be used.

Plus it uses all unallocated physical RAM to cache the filesystem where
it can.

This is why you'll see a little swap use on even a lightly-loaded linux
machine.

Also, some kernels, for lack of a better solution when all the
overcommitted memory loans gets called in at once, tends to kill the
biggest memory user without warning. Which is stupid.

Linux tends to put a new memory manager in every week, so this is all
probably wrong already.

Turning off swap completely on a Linux box (or any box, really) is not a
good idea. Ideally you never need it, though.

--ryan.








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