Re: X server being killed a lot

[Lars Reichardt <lars%paradoxon.info@localhost>]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2018 09:46:34 +0100
Thomas Klausner <tk%giga.or.at@localhost> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 12:18:01PM -0400, Michael wrote:
> > I've had firefox starting to get swapped out ( and everything
> > slowing to a crawl because of it ) while in active use, with more
> > than half of RAM being used as file cache, and nothing hammering
> > the filesystem either.
> > One would think the OS would shrink the cache first, especially if
> > it's several gigabytes.
> > 
> > It helped somewhat to add this to sysctl.conf:
> > vm.filemin=2
> > vm.filemax=10
> > now it still uses well over 10% or memory as file cache but seems
> > more willing to shrink it.  
> 
> I just gave that a try after X was killed again, setting the values
> with sysctl -w.
> 
> Then I restarted X, gnucash and firefox and X got killed again before
> all of them had finished starting up.
> 
> Is there some delay until these values are really used? Or are they
> only relevant if we're below the magic boundary and afterwards they
> are not enforced so much because the limit has already been broken?
> How do those limits work?
>  Thomas

Those values are used under memory pressure when the pagedaemon scans
for pages to be replaced. They change the behavior which pages are
taken as candidates for replacement. 

Lars

-----
Mystische Erklärungen:
Die mystischen Erklärungen gelten für tief;
die Wahrheit ist, dass sie noch nicht einmal oberflächlich sind.

   -- Friedrich Nietzsche
   [ Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft Buch 3, 126 ]