[CentOS] Swap

Mon Jun 5 20:28:04 UTC 2006
Max H. <btmanmeh at verizon.net>

Sam Drinkard wrote:
> I assume then, with swappiness set to 0, *if* the system does happen to 
> need some extra pages, then it *will* go into swap, but only if all 
> memory is exhausted?  Zat sound right?

 From what I know about it, yes your statement is correct. If you have 
swap turned off though, yeah your system is going to freak out for sure. 
Some people seem to run with no swap at all, but I was always taught to 
not do so, I guess it's personal preference and experiences.

I've played with different swappiness settings on my laptop, but I never 
really noticed any difference between the default that CentOS has, and 
whatever values I used. I tried it at 10 and 90 (I believe the default 
is 80), at least that's what I have mine set to), and I really didn't 
notice any difference at all.

I've never run out of memory though, at 1GB in my laptop, I never come 
close to exhausting all of it.

Perhaps others have better results with playing with swappiness values.

Max