Hello all,


I tested linux 2.4.17rc1 regarding the VM. As test I did what I'm doing 
frequently: making a incremental backup (the source is about 20 GB) with 
rsync (via ssh) of my server to my backup-server.



server 	----->			backup-server


The building of the filelist on the server needed 64MB (!) swap. The 
building of the filelist on the backup-server needed 151 MB swap (!)

You can find the processlist with all running processes of the server 
and the backup-server in the attached file VM. I used a file because of 
the ugly line cutting in the mail.

The processlist of the server was done after completing the filelist on 
the server - the processlist of the backup-server was a snapshot while 
building its filelist.


During data transport, the swap space on the backup-server increased to 
243 MB (!) and the system swaped nearly nonstop. Because the 
swap-space reached the limit, I gave the backup-server during 
data-transport more swap with swapon /dev/hdb13.

A snapshot of free on the backup-server:
free
              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        514368     509968       4400          0     177328     164220
-/+ buffers/cache:     168420     345948
Swap:      1052208     243228     808980

After completing, the swap on the backupserver was reduced to 65MB and 
on the server to 37MB

I think it is not necessary to emphasis, that the backup-server was very 
slow and tenacious during data transport!
The behaviour of 2.4.17rc1 isn't better than evry other 2.4.x-version. 
There is only one exception:
I did the same with kernel 2.4.13 - and this version worked extremly 
fine nearly without any swapping.
Linux-2.2.x is working fine, too - that is without swapping in this 
situation.


Regards,
Andreas Hartmann