From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <741e84ebf5bff0c3b8696c9318636f05@terzarima.net> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] plan 9 overcommits memory? From: Charles Forsyth Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 20:52:36 +0100 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: b646b02c-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 >> Well, when I used it on an old 32 MB laptop (terminal) and a 64 MB >> desktop (cpu server), swap would seem to work all right until you >> hit about 30-40% usage. This was the case with both systems; when >> I asked about it, a couple other people mentioned the same behavior. >> The thing is, it's pretty hard to test swap under normal usage; the only >> time I ran into this problem was while compiling a new kernel. >> > > I forgot to write what happened when swap broke--like Nemo, I found > that the machine would lock solid, requiring a reboot. years ago i would compile and link kernels on a 4mbyte 386-16/sx (really! and using cpu -c to run awk, because there wasn't a 387). i was in the same room as the file server. you could tell when it was paging, which had a distinctive, dramatic sound. it paged frequently when linking a kernel. it survived. if it's broken now, it sounds as though something changed that probably could be tracked down and repaired. (i tend to suspect the presence of notes, including alarms, but that's just a suspicion, because of the interruptions in the kernel). why bother? perhaps the underlying cause is messing up something else too. could use a useful simple test case, though. ideally, without graphics.