Swappiness

SWAPPINESS ( The Great Swappiness Discussion )

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HANDLE WITH CARE

This is a complicated issue: there has been a discussion about the use of swap and the 2.6 kernel . . . . . and there are two sides to this issue, one says lower the default "swappiness" number the other side says put it to the max.
Now the default setting for Mandrake is 60 . . . . the maximum is 100, the minimum is 0. and on cooker they advise to put it at 10.

You can see what the current ( default ) swappiness is by doing:

CODE

# cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

You can change the default by adding a line to "/etc/sysctl.conf" , the line should be

QUOTE (Text @ Screen)

vm.swappiness=10

( For the value 10 )
And after that reboot.

Here is the swappiness discussion on kerneltrap: ( Warning: it is confusing ! )
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3000
http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2003102700926OSKNSW

And here is a quote from Cooker:

QUOTE (Mail @ Cooker)

Another source of slow downs is currently the kernel swappiness,
which let the kernel swap to disk even if there is no need
(at least IMHO) for doing that; there is a parameter called
vm.swappiness, which defines the attitude of kernel to swap.
Currently the default value is 60, but lowering to 10 or 5 would cause
the machine to be better responsive, e.g. adding "vm.swappiness=10" to "/etc/sysctl.conf"

Now, here is my take: I tried a few settings on my boxes and really can not notice the difference . . . . but that might be just because my boxes run really smooth, have enough CPU and RAM.
So if you have little RAM, your KDE is slow or whatever, have a try but don't expect too much from this. . . . . on the other hand: you never know it might work for you !

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HANDLE WITH CARE

Bruno

-- Oct 12 2004 ( Revised Dec 13 2005 ) --