On 02/11/10 13:26, Vic wrote:
>
>> Can any explain, or have pointers to documentation, which give examples of
>> what sort of behaviour to expect for different values?
>
> I don't have any real detail, but I did play with this a bit when I was
> getting some slow laptops to work.
>
> I set the swappiness to 20, and it makes a world of difference to the
> responsiveness of the system. Older laptops are especially susceptible to
> over-aggressive swapping because the disk I/O is often so slow...
>
> 20 is now my standard setup for anything where I expect disk latency to be
> an issue. I've been very pleased with the results, but I have no idea if
> they're optimal.
>
> Vic.
I didn't know about swappiness before, but my desktop machine does get a
bit 'latent' sometimes, so I'll try toying with this value.
A quick Google reveals this idiot's guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What%20is%20swappiness%20and%20how%20do%20I%20change%20it?
so I'll try setting swappiness to 10 and see what happens.
That page also says:
With the 2.6 kernel, "a swap file is just as fast as a swap partition."
which is news to me. Maybe it's time to stop worrying about swap
partitions when setting up Linux machines.
cheers
Chris
--
Chris Dennis cgdennis@???
Fordingbridge, Hampshire, UK
