swap is not used
 

HI
I have the problem that I just installed debian on colinux and I can
not get swap to work at all. First I thought it is a colinux problem
but I can mount the swap and it shows up when checking available mem.
But when I use KDE and launch firefox in there the User interface is so
slow that it is imposible to use. I had on the same machine everything
alredy running but lost it. And I know that swap was working back than.
I even added swapfile on root to rule out that the problem is caused by
mounting


Here are some infos about my machine
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
$free

total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 515936 31112 484824 0 5452
16692
-/+ buffers/cache: 8968 506968
Swap: 327664 0 327664

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
$dmsg

Linux version 2.6.10-co-0.6.2 (karrde@callisto.yi.org) (gcc version
3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-8)) #5 Sat Feb 5 10:19:16 IST 2005
512MB LOWMEM available.
initrd enabled: start: 0xdfea2000 size: 0x0015db27)
On node 0 totalpages: 131072
DMA zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 131072 pages, LIFO batch:16
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: root=/dev/cobd/0
Initializing CPU#0
Setting proxy interrupt vectors
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 65536 bytes)
Using cooperative for high-res timesource
Console: colour CoCON 80x25
Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Memory: 514304k/524288k available (1502k kernel code, 0k reserved, 548k
data, 104k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay loop... 187.18 BogoMIPS (lpj=935936)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: a7e9f9bf 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: a7e9f9bf 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I cache: 32K, L1 D cache: 32K
CPU: L2 cache: 1024K
CPU: After all inits, caps: a7e9f9bf 00000000 00000000 00000040
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz stepping 05
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
checking if image is initramfs...it isn't (no cpio magic); looks like
an initrd
Freeing initrd memory: 1398k freed
NET: Registered protocol family 16
devfs: 2004-01-31 Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
devfs: boot_options: 0x0
cofuse init 0.1 (API version 2.2)
Initializing Cryptographic API
serio: cokbd at irq 1
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler anticipatory registered
io scheduler deadline registered
io scheduler cfq registered
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
elevator: using anticipatory as default io scheduler
cobd: loaded (max 32 devices)
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
conet: loaded (max 16 devices)
conet0: initialized
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on cokbd
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 65536)
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
EXT3 FS on cobd0, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem).
Trying to move old root to /initrd ... <6>kjournald starting. Commit
interval 5 seconds
okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 104k freed
Adding 262136k swap on /dev/cobd1. Priority:1 extents:1
Adding 65528k swap on /swapfile. Priority:1 extents:20
EXT3 FS on cobd2, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on cobd3, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
fstab

/dev/cobd0 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/cobd2 /home ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/cobd3 /usr ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/cobd1 swap swap defaults,pri=1 1 1
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

Thanks for taking your time to help

Sure the fstab entry is correct? Mount point should say none IMO.
/dev/hda[x] none swap sw 0 0

But it seems to work. Another thing is the priority, it really should be -1 (minus one) or it will interfere.

Try some different values with one swap file till it works. Two might be too much now.

Swap doesn't have to be used for it to be working correctly. Think of it as standby memory, when no swap is in use, that means your memory is being utilized properly.

Hi Moloko

thanks for your answer but does not seem to help. I set its prio to -1. I went a little further to see if my swap is working and found out that it is working just fine with ...

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/cobd1 bs=1M count=10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
10485760 bytes transferred in 0.177071 seconds (59217805 bytes/sec)



->trickykid
I know that but when sing KDE and your mem looks like the one below the machine should be swaping
...................total.............used...........free...... shared....buffers.....cached
Mem:......515936.........512176.........3760...........0.........14724.....374272
-/+ buffers/cache:.......123180.....392756
Swap:.....262136..................0.....262136

.... so to sum up my machine is still super slow when using KDE which I would love to use. But the reason why the machine does not want to swap is still not found.
:Pengy:

swap is a complex think
It's not really possible to state that the machine should be using swap.
swap is not really just extra memory.
swap is backing storage for anonymous non media backed data and that's all it is.
so if you are not running programs that generate alot of anonymous non media backed data then no swap.

the question should be how can i get or can someone help me get KDE to not run like crap.
the answer might lie in reducing total processes running
optimizing kernel.
trimming kde features.
whatever.

Think of it this way, when my swap is being used, I look into the reasons on why it was used, as my current setups should not use swap at all in 99% of the cases..

But yeah, if KDE is running sluggish, look into other reasons. Swap usage for KDE is not going to help the slowness.