Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!texbell!merch!cpe!adaptex!neese
From: neese@adaptex.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Swapping Questions
Message-ID: <21600008@adaptex>
Date: 15 Feb 90 14:54:00 GMT
References: <6882@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Lines: 35
Nf-ID: #R:pbhyf.PacBell.COM:6882:adaptex:21600008:000:1627
Nf-From: adaptex.UUCP!neese    Feb 15 08:54:00 1990


>I am running Interactive 2.0.2 on a Wyse 386/25 machine with 4
>megs of memory.  During a recent compile of GCC, the machine had to
>go out and swap processes to the swap area on the disk.  
> 
>A swap -l showed that we were into the disk swap area for about
>150 blocks.   Three days after the compile completed, we were 
>STILL in the disk swap space for 120 blocks or so.  killing
>the gettys on both of the virtual terminals regained xx blocks.
>Killing and restarting the lpsched daemon managed to regain all 
>of the blocks except for 8.
> 
>Short of rebooting, how do I get those other unknown processes back
>into main memory?  And should I really care about being out in swap??

You shouldn't really care.
 
>And aren't processes supposed to go back into main memory when there
>is sufficient space available?

Theoritically, processes that have been swapped out of main memory will be
swapped back in once they are needed by the system, and if there is enough
memory for them to be swapped back in at the time they are needed.  You can
test this by executing a print job, which should cause the lp daemon to be
swapped back into main memeory if there is enough memory for this, you can
so the same thing for the gettys, have any inactive ttys login and the gettys
should be swapped back in; again if there is enough memory.  If the processes
are not needed, then they will stay on the swapper until needed, so you should
not worry about it.

			Roy Neese
			Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer
			UUCP @ {texbell,attctc}!cpe!adaptex!neese
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