Re: [gentoo-user] Memory Usage

[Redouane Boumghar]

Hello all,

Grant wrote:
> Also, I've noticed in top that when my server's 2GB of memory is
> filled, it uses a small amount of swap (~24k) before it frees some up.
> The "Swap: 24k" then remains.  Is that normal?

Yes I have also notice that after a heavy ram use I get this tiny
space used on my swap. And it remains even after my ram has been half freed.
My box has 1GB of ram and the small amount I sometime get on swap is
164KB and it can stay like that for 2 weeks, until i reboot.
But I assume rebooting is not a great solution for a server :=)

Writing to disk is too expensive as Pablo Antonio suggested, so once swap
has been used it won't be cleaned until next use, but how to be sure
it is cleaned at next use ?

Anyway if you want to have stats on the usage of your memory you can use 'free'
but for a long-period log I would recommend 'vmstat' as it puts everything on one 
line so you could gnuplot it later.

vmstat | grep -v [a-z] >> memory.log


As Daniel Iliev suggested, there is the configurable sysctl for swap control 
solutions. The variables vm.swappiness and the vm.swap_token_timeout which
control the "trashing behavior". I didn't really find much info on vm.swap_token_timeout.

The man is not very extensive.
Has Anyone more info on configuration of the file /etc/sysctl.conf  ?
especially for :
vm.swappiness
vm.swap_token_timeout

If we get a solution or just some more info,
it would be nice to have a wiki page about it, wouldn't it ? ;)

Have a Good Day,
Red.

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