Swap is not used with 2.1.36?

Stephane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@internatif.org)
Sat, 10 May 1997 20:13:39 +0200


My 2.1.36 (the same problem occured in 2.1.34) does not seem to use
the swap space at all. "/proc/meminfo" reports always an unused swap,
although no error messages are logged by swapon or anyone else:

total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 64585728 60977152 3608576 28352512 4460544 26128384
Swap: 115306496 0 115306496
MemTotal: 63072 kB
MemFree: 3524 kB
MemShared: 27688 kB
Buffers: 4356 kB
Cached: 25516 kB
SwapTotal: 112604 kB
SwapFree: 112604 kB

As a consequence, when memory becomes low, one application after the other,
the system stops working. The kernel still responds (to a ping for instance)
but all the applications freeze, apparently as soon as they request memory.
I cannot even run a new application like "shutdown", so I have to reset with
the Big Red Button. No error messages are reported anywhere.

I tried:

- making the swap space again with 'mkswap -c /dev/sda3'.
- set up a swap file with a high priority (swapon -p 32000 /tmp/swapfile).
free reports the swap file is added but it is not used.
- upgrading to mount 2.6g (with the new swapon).

Nothing changed.