how to force a process to use a specific swap ?

arisu · 03-19-2014, 06:37 AM

Is there a way to force a process to use a specific swap ?

I have several programs with memory leak. I would like to make sure the memory leak gets swapped into harddisk swap partition instead of filling up precious zram swap.

pan64 · 03-19-2014, 06:48 AM

I do not think there is a way to force it. From the other hand those programs will eat up all of the available memory and swap... You would better try to fix it.

gengisdave · 03-19-2014, 07:20 AM

look for cgroups and swappiness

arisu · 03-19-2014, 10:21 AM

The leaking processes are xorg, compiz, and gtk-window-decorator. I might search for the real culpit when I have more time. As the system is otherwise good and stable, I just want to limit the impact for now.

I see how cgroups' swappiness setting can be used to turn off swapping completely for a process. But I can't figure out how to force the kernel to use a specific swap when swapping out a specific process.

gengisdave · 03-19-2014, 10:34 AM

highest swappiness level (100) force kernel to swap instantly, or almost; for a specific swap area i think you can use priority, but i'm not sure about it

arisu · 03-19-2014, 08:26 PM

One can set swap priority for each swap via swapon -p or in /etc/fstab, but that applies to all processes.

Setting swap partition priority high for leaking processes and low for all other processes would work, but I can't find cgroups setting which changes swap priority for specific group of processes.