Ok I understand better now.
So when we swap in, the place is still reserved in swap for the next time we swap off
the same memory part.
The swap is freed only when the owner terminates.
Then when we need more memory, we need to swap off but we don't use the duplicated
part.
I understand that it is to avoid fragmentation but this can lead to false OOM
situation (false because we have free memory in swap but it's reserved to avoid
fragmentation).
Christophe
On ven, 16 mar 2001 00:26:35 Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, christophe barbe wrote:
>
> > Please Rik, could you explain what you mean with "reclaim swap
> > space when we run out". In my (limited) understanding, when
> > there's no more free memory (ram and swap space), the kernel
> > starts to kill process (and the choice is a difficult point).
> > Are you proposing to add an API to reclaim swap instead of
> > killing process ?
>
> When we swap something in from swap, it is in effect "duplicated"
> in memory and swap. Freeing the swap space of these duplicates
> will mean we have, effectively, more swap space.
>
> Rik
> --
> Linux MM bugzilla: http://linux-mm.org/bugzilla.shtml
>
> Virtual memory is like a game you can't win;
> However, without VM there's truly nothing to lose...
>
> http://www.surriel.com/
> http://www.conectiva.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
--
Christophe Barbé
Software Engineer
Lineo High Availability Group
42-46, rue Médéric
92110 Clichy - France
phone (33).1.41.40.02.12
fax (33).1.41.40.02.01
www.lineo.com
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
