Swap Performance in Linux

GizmoDuck writes "I'm working in a computational chemistry lab, and we find ourselves using memory and CPU hogs like Amber and Gaussian. The CPU hogging isn't a problem, thanks to Condor, but when submitting one of the jobs that request (and pretty much require) all the physical RAM in the machines, Linux promptly starts swapping so hard that the mouse pointer in X stops moving, NFS and NIS halt, and things don't get back to normal for five minutes. I've tried toying a bit with the settings in /proc/sys/vm/kswapd to no avail. I've done some poking around on the 'net looking for answers. Faster disks and swap partitions at the beginning of the drive aren't really an option at this point. I haven't found a good solution yet. I was wondering if the /. community has any input on how to keep the system from locking during periods of necessarily high swap activity?"

Comments

i'm a don't use swap nut

[abdulla]

i'm one of those people who don't use swap space, my rationale is this, its sped up my computer activity a lot, i have a relatively slow computer (350) and i forked out $35 for another 256meg ram, now i have 384 and i feel its the best thing i've done. sure i don't use my entire ram on one program, but for general acitivity i find i only end up using about 128meg ram (lotsa programs working) and i get a lot of hard drive cache space so those mp3s keep rolling in. for a few dollars if i can be a lot more comfortable with my systems performance, why not? i have a 60 gig hard drive, but i bought it to store data not as temporary memory.