Tuning Linux VM swapping

Lank writes "Kernel developers started discussing the pros and cons of swapping to disk on the Linux Kernel mailing list. KernelTrap has coverage of the story on their homepage. Andrew Morton comments, 'My point is that decreasing the tendency of the kernel to swap stuff out is wrong. You really don't want hundreds of megabytes of BloatyApp's untouched memory floating about in the machine. Get it out on the disk, use the memory for something useful.' Personally, I just try to keep my memory usage below the physical memory in my machine, but I guess that's not always possible..."

Comments

Please set up a proper default

[dorfsmay]

Unlike say latest versions of AIX where the OS gives higher priority to the cache than to apps, and you have to go deep in the tuning manual to read that the default probably doesn't suit many situation, please adjust maxperm etc...