Messages in this thread | | | From | Denis Vlasenko <> | Subject | Re: cache limit | Date | Tue, 19 Aug 2003 08:33:49 +0300 |
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On 19 August 2003 07:39, Anthony R. wrote: > I would like to tune my kernel not to use as much memory for cache > as it currently does. I have 2GB RAM, but when I am running one program > that accesses a lot of files on my disk (like rsync), that program uses > most of the cache, and other programs wind up swapping out. I'd prefer to > have just rsync run slower because less of its data is cached, rather > than have > all my other programs run more slowly. rsync is not allocating memory, > but the kernel is caching it at the expense of other programs.
There was a discussion (and patches) in the middle of 2.5 series about O_STREAMING open flag which mean "do not aggressively cache this file". Targeted at MP3/video playing, copying large files and such.
I don't know whether it actually was merged. If it was, your program can use it.
> With 2GB on a system, I should never page out, but I consistently do and I > need to tune the kernel to avoid that. Cache usage is around 1.4 GB!
So why did you configured your system to have huge swap? That's rather contradictory setup ;)
> I never had this problem with earlier kernels. I've read a lot of comments > where so-called experts poo-poo this problem, but it is real and > repeatable and I am > ready to take matters into my own hands to fix it. I am told the cache > is replaced when > another program needs more memory, so it shouldn't swap, but that is not > the > behaviour I am seeing. > > Can anyone help point me in the right direction?
I'd say stop allocating insane amounts of swap. Frankly, with 2G you may run without swap at all. -- vda - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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