[Bug 523024] Re: system thrashes even with lots of free memory

[Michael]

My work PC is fairly similar - Dell Optiplex 755, 4GB RAM, karmic 64
bit, winxp VM (768M RAM, used only for outlook and VMware Infrastructure
Client), huge swapping issues. I find that turning off swap helps, apart
from that it then results in my Firefox receiving attention from the OOM
killer every few days. :P

A vmstat excerpt (hmm, need fixed width font):

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 1  6 483208 619788  17516 1185036  204  116   720   380  658 1044  6  2  0 92
 0  6 483520 621448  17500 1183048   56  336   532  1144  669 1194 10  2  0 89
 0  8 483760 622348  17496 1182876   76  280   480  1320  644 1013  9  0  1 90
 0  7 484068 624580  17468 1180412   84  392   616  1160  686 1236  9  1  4 87
 0  5 484528 625820  17412 1179828    0  468   744  1044  788 1433  7  1  0 92
 0  6 485164 628192  17348 1178340    8  640   796  1700  861 1488  5  1  0 94
 0  5 485204 634640  17284 1177020    0  488   628  1416  770 1366  4  0  0 96
 0  7 485292 635764  17272 1176152    0   88   208   588  408  955  1  0  0 99
 0  7 485496 632540  17248 1175464   64  216   676   736  637 1307  7  0  0 92
 0  7 485612 628704  17232 1174932  244  128  1132   388  692 1610 12  1  0 88
 0  4 485824 641724  17208 1173388   44  220   572   860  645 1289  9  1  0 89
 0  5 486516 646972  17168 1171724   48  712   632  1288  685 1223 10  1  1 88
 0  4 487428 650088  17156 1169656   32  964   636  2400  717 1353  8  2  3 86
 2  5 487604 650832  17148 1169304    0  192   596  1052  613 1138 11  1  0 88
 0  5 487708 651328  17116 1168868   36  112   376   688  517 1116  9  0 23 68
 2  4 488004 656032  17104 1168136  140  352   840  1392  654 1144 10  1  0 88
 0  5 488372 661116  17044 1164024   24  424   412  1392  581 1004 10  2  0 89
 2  4 488688 666084  17052 1163128  172  356   504  1068  540 1042 12  1  0 87
 0  4 489008 667712  17012 1161992    0  336   408  1412  567  948 12  2  1 85
 0  4 489448 669076  16976 1161392    8  460   264  1136  451  843 10  1  0 89

Seeing swapout activity with free>swpd is a frequent occurrence.

(BTW: I'd swapoff the slow swap. swap=RAM*2 probably made more sense
when hard drives were a thousandth of the speed of RAM rather than the
ten thousandth they are today :P)

-- 
system thrashes even with lots of free memory
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/523024
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