Johnny Billquist(bqt@Update.UU.SE) said 2004.08.27 11:20:14 +0000:
> I have 128MB in the machine, and am currently experiencing a load of about 
> 4, with over 90% processor idle time, and *lots* of paging. At the same 
> time, the file cache is holding 33 MB of memory.

I'm running a -current kernel on my laptop, which has 256MB of internal
memory, and a quite slow HDD. The filecache is usually ~170MB, this is
really way too much, and this is with no significant programs running. Using
firefox, or kde brings the system to its knees when it's swapping. 

On my more powerful workstations/servers this is not a problem since they
either have swap on SCSI drives or reasonably fast IDE drives (7200rpm vs
4200rpm).

> I think the system currently is very badly tuned by default.

I've tried setting vm.filemax to 30, heck even 11, but that doesn't make any
difference. 

On this machine I've got xmms, bittorrent, konsole, blackbox, and an
instance of firefox (only one web page) running. Of the 256MB, 113MB is
filecache, and a whopping 400-1400kB is free. Of the 768MB of swap 113MB is
used.

> But I know that people probably disagree with me, so I have just one 
> question: how do I limit the file cache to take no more than, say, 16 MB?
> No matter how much the system thinks it *might* be able to use.

This is more of an issue to people with slow HDDs, like people who run it on
laptops (like me), or have their swap on a tape drive or something.

> 	Johnny
	--Wouter