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There are several files in /proc/sys/vm you can use to tune the
memory system with.

You inspect them with 'cat', and set them with 'echo'. For example,
/proc/sys/vm/freepages:

'# cat /proc/sys/vm/freepages' may yield:
64      96      128

These three numbers are: min_free_pages, free_pages_low and 
free_pages_high.

You can adjust these with a command such as:

# echo "128 256 512" > /proc/sys/vm/freepages

Free memory never goes down below min_free_pages except for atomic
allocation.  Background swapping is started if the number of free
pages falls below free_pages_high, and intensive swapping is started
below free_pages_low.  A "page" is 4 kB.

The values selected as boot defaults are the following:  For a
machine with n>=8 Megabytes of memory, set min_free_pages = n*2,
free_pages_low = n*3 and free_pages_high = n*4.  Machines with
8 Megabytes or less behave as if they had 8 Megabytes.

If "out of memory" errors sometimes occur, or if your machine does lots
of networking, increasing min_free_pages to 64 or more may be a good
idea.

free_pages_low should probably be about double of min_free_pages.

After a period of inactivity, the difference between free_pages_high and
free_pages low is immediately available for any program you want to
start up, without any need to swap out anything else.  If your memory
is large enough (e.g. > 16 Meg), keeping 2 or 3 megabytes of memory
ready for this purpose is probably a good idea.

I've found that

# echo "128 256 1024" > /proc/sys/vm/freepages

gives good performance for a 32 Meg system used as a small server and
personal workstation.

The other three files in /proc/sys/vm are undocumented, as yet.

Thomas Koenig, ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de