> Please try out arca-vm-22. You can set the percentage of the cache
> (buffer+filecache+swapcache) that your system will get close when you'll
> be low on memory. The cache percentage is tunable via the second number in
> the sysctl `.../sys/vm/pager`.
>
> ftp://e-mind.com/pub/linux/kernel-patches/2.2.0-pre7-arca-VM-22
As VM-22 didn't compile (missing macros), and VM-23 appeared to fix these, I
tried it instead.
At first glance, it looks far better. Much less is swapped (though some is
still swapped, and I can't see why. Why does the kernel need to swap things
when it has enough physical memory?).
But soon afterwards, as soon as I got a little lower on memory, the kernel
started to deny requests for memory allocations - or at least so it seemed.
Applications failed to execute claiming they have no memory, Netscape and X
died with a signal 7 (SIGUNUSED. Amusing), I couldn't even login because
bash couldn't execute; and all this when there is plenty of swap available
(about 36mb).
If there is any test you want me to perform on VM-23, let me know.
> Let me know if it's what you like.
It seems that it is. Excluding this... hmmm... feature. ;-)
I guess you can try it out yourself by mlocking most of your physical
memory, and running some programs.
I very much appreciate your work on the kernel - thanks.
Nimrod
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