On Thu, 2 Apr 1998 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I asked earlier on this list about why memory is sucked up into buffers. I > appreciate the answers and thank everyone who responded. Now I have a new > question: why won't the kernel release the swap space that it apparently > needed sometime earlier? The kernel is 2.0.30 > > Here's a snapshot of /proc/meminfo. Please note that it has 29 megs of > physical memory available, but still insist on using swap space. > > total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: > Mem: 97660928 68157440 29503488 11612160 48906240 5804032 > Swap: 33026048 319488 32706560
Why should it release them? Why bother to copy 300K of very rarely accessed memory from disk into RAM when it is quite happily leaving them there, and thus having more free RAM? It doesn't swap pages back from disk to RAM until something accesses them (if I understand correctly). Jules /----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd | | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TW9 2TF *UK* | +----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
