From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 20:05:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 20:05:09 -0400 Received: from ch-12-44-139-249.lcisp.com ([12.44.139.249]:27008 "HELO dual.lcisp.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 20:04:59 -0400 From: "Kevin Krieser" To: "Linux Kernel List" Subject: RE: Swap size for a machine with 2GB of memory Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 19:05:08 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I was just experimenting on my personal Linux computer this weekend, which has 512MB of RAM and 700MB of swap. I also have an unpatched 2.4.8 kernel installed. I wrote a program that allocated 700MB of RAM and touched every page, then read it back in. When finished, there remained 250+ meg of swap in use, but no corresponding free space in RAM, compared to before running my test program. The expected behavior of the 2.4 kernels seemed to be followed, where many programs retained space in both RAM and swap. However, since my normal behavior is for swap to not be used, I will wait a little bit for some of the VM updates to be tested. I don't have 2X RAM because when I installed my system, I only had 256MB of RAM.