Thrashing

[JJ Neff]

My linux box started as just a test machine of spare parts.  K6 266 with 48 MB
ram and I believe 48 MB swap or something like that.

I have a PII 350 and 128 MB in my Windows box I may have to swap those parts:-)

JJN

--- "Dennis J. Eberl" <dje at pcom.net> wrote:
> John,
> 
> JJ Neff wrote:
> 
> > The "thrashing did occur while I was responding to e-mail in Yahoo mail. 
> So
> > many pages were open in Netscape.
> 
> I haven't had thrashing under this circumstance, but I have had Netscape
> freeze
> up. It didn't stop me from retreating to my Shisen-Sho game on another
> desktop
> and when I returned, Netscape "magically" (yeah, sure) started working again.
> 
> I am running an SMP kernel with two Pentium Pro processors and only 64
> MB of RAM. How much memory on your machine? Thrashing occurs when
> memory is so tight the little sucker starts paging its brains out (using
> swap,
> a.k.a., virtual memory) to creep along trying to do the job. It's a pain in
> the
> ASCII but only becomes a problem if it ends up deadlocked (think of a snake
> swallowing it's tail), meaning it can never complete an operation.
> 
> DOES ANYONE HAVE A REALLY COMPETENT EXPLANATION?


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