On Sun, Dec 22, 2002 at 02:40:21PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: > I just put a new harddisk into one of the workstations here, remade > partitions, rsync'd the system over, then created the swap space, then > booted, and it all worked - except for swap. > > here's what i did: > > mother:~# grep swap /etc/fstab > /dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0 > > mother:~# mkswap /dev/hda2 > Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1019928576 bytes > > mother:~# swapon /dev/hda2 > > mother:~# cat /proc/swaps > Filename Type Size Used Priority > /dev/hda2 partition 996020 0 -1 > > mother:~> free > total used free shared buffers cached > Mem: 516580 475844 40736 0 170540 224736 > -/+ buffers/cache: 80568 436012 > Swap: 996020 0 996020 > > now say i'll start openoffice and mozilla and a couple of others, just to > consume RAM. the system will not use the swap space. any idea why not? But it still works, right? It really depends on which kernel you're using. 2.2 kernels seem to like to keep stuff in RAM until you really need the space; it'll then swap. Early 2.4 kernels just seemed to randomly go into swap-storm-mode under load and swap your entire RAM out onto disk, rendering your system unusable for long periods. Recent 2.4 kernels (or older ones with the -aa VM system, or the -ac patches that included them) work much better, and keep just the right balance of ram/swap usage. Anyhow, you have 512MB of RAM, quite your complaining :) -rob
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