From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266161AbUGZXLt (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:11:49 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266155AbUGZXLt (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:11:49 -0400 Received: from mail001.syd.optusnet.com.au ([211.29.132.142]:55786 "EHLO mail001.syd.optusnet.com.au") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266161AbUGZXC5 (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:02:57 -0400 References: <20040725173652.274dcac6.akpm@osdl.org> <20040726202946.GD26075@ca-server1.us.oracle.com> <20040726134258.37531648.akpm@osdl.org> Message-ID: X-Mailer: http://www.courier-mta.org/cone/ From: Con Kolivas To: Andrew Morton Cc: Joel Becker , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Autotune swappiness01 Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:58:41 +1000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Andrew Morton writes: > Joel Becker wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 10:43:01AM +1000, Con Kolivas wrote: >> > Low memory boxes and ones that are heavily laden with applications find >> > that ends up making things slow down trying to keep all applications in >> > physical ram. >> >> Lowish memory boxes with plain desktop loads find that the default >> of '60' is a terrible one (I'm speaking of 1GHz-ish machines with 256MB >> (like mine) or 512MB (like a guy next to me)). Every person I know who >> installs 2.6 complains about how it feels slow and choppy. I tell them >> "The first thing I do after installing 2.6 is set swappiness to '20'." >> Sure enough, they set swappiness to 20 and their box starts behaving >> like a properly tuned one. >> I don't know what workload the default of '60' is for, but for >> the (128MB < x < 1GB) of RAM case, it sucks (and I've seen the same >> behavior on a 300MHz 196MB box). >> > > Yes, I think 60% is about right for a 512-768M box. Too high for the > smaller machines, too low for the larger ones. Sigh.. I have a 1Gb desktop machine that refuses to keep my applications in ram overnight if I have a swappiness higher than the default so I think lots of desktop users with more ram will be unhappy with higher settings. > More intelligent selection of the initial value is needed. Perhaps, but I really doubt desktop users running mainline would be happy about it going significantly higher. Cheers, Con