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Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:38:13 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Bill Nottingham <notting@redhat.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: bad caching behavior in 2.6.12rc1
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Bill Nottingham <notting@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> When I upgraded from 2.6.11 to 2.6.12rc1, the VM started
> behaving really badly with respect to caching.
> 
> Test box is a 1.5GB laptop.
> 
> In typical use, I would open a mailbox A, and then switch
> to mailbox B. Immediately switching back to mailbox A, I
> would find out it was no longer cached. (Using maildirs,
> FWIW.)
> 
> Looking at /proc/meminfo, I would see:
> 
> LowFree: 8-12MB
> HighFree: 300-400MB
> Cached: 100-200MB
> 
> i.e., it was evicting cache when there was plenty of highmem
> available for use.

Where's the rest of the memory gone?  A full /proc/meminfo would be useful.