Nick Piggin wrote:

>
>
> Nick Piggin wrote:
>
>>
>> There are a few things backed out now in 2.6.4-rc1-mm1, and quite a
>> few other changes. I hope we can trouble you to test 2.6.4-rc1-mm1?
>>
>> Tell me, do you have highmem enabled on this system? If so, swapping
>> might be explained by the batching patch. With it, a small highmem
>> zone could possibly place quite a lot more pressure on a large
>> ZONE_NORMAL.
>>
>> 2.6.4-rc1-mm1 sould do much better here.
>
>
>
> Gah no. It would have the same problem actually, if that is indeed
> what is happening.
>
> It will take a bit more work to solve this in rc1-mm1. You would
> probably want to explicitly use incremental min limits for kswapd.
>
> (background info in kswapd-avoid-higher-zones.patch)
>
>

Mike, it would be interesting if you could try out the 2.6.4-rc1-mm1
VM patches before and after this little beauty.

Andrew, I think you had kswapd scanning in the direction opposite the
one indicated by your comments. Or maybe I've just confused myself?