I have to say again it is not an good option to set vm.swappiness to 0. Lowering it from the 60 to 25 is the one thing I would recommend. vm.vfs_cache_pressure setting to 50 means more ram is used for caching. So contraproductive you want more free RAM. I would recommend this setting to 100 (basically leaving it at 100). Lubuntu should think about changing the defaults for LTS (14.04) . As we will have more than half year experience with tweaked sysctl settings in neptune it would be wise to build upon this. As for your suggestion about vm.swappiness 0 and cache pressure 50 it would be nice to test how it behaves on very low ram (which means 256 MB) and what happens if ram runs full and how the system behaves with many applications open on installed and live system. Our experience so far is that it freezes (not as in buggy freeze of the kernel) but in GUI only and swapd is running like crazy on the hdd. As long as the ram is not running full the system behaves faster (as its not swapping at all). I know that I repeat myself here but as it is suggested again I really couldn't resists :)
On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 10:47:21 +0200
Nio Wiklund <nio.wikl...@gmail.com> wrote: > [Results after installation at the end] > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: final Lubuntu i386 desktop live > Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 09:06:30 +0200 > From: Nio Wiklund <nio.wikl...@gmail.com> > To: lubuntu-qa@lists.launchpad.net <lubuntu-qa@lists.launchpad.net> > > Hi! > > I have started testing the final Lubuntu i386 desktop live session, and > found the bugs 940919 and 1213837. > > Slow but no freeze with low RAM > > I limited RAM to 256 MB, and it worked. no freeze while I installed htop > at the same time as I opened Firefox. I could run htop and watch > swapping. Firefox was extremely slow, and you hardly browse to > ubuntu.com (I saw the top of the page but could not scroll, even after > waiting for minutes). So live session with 256 MB is no go with this > version in this computer > > http://www.toshiba.se/laptops/satellite-pro/c850/satellite-pro-c850-19w/ > > if you want to browse the internet. I could close Firefox and see the > RAM being released. > > Maybe old hardware and an installed system eats less RAM, so it might > work better with low RAM, but the main reason of this test was to > stress-test zRAM. > > Best regards > Nio > ------------------------ > Hi again, > > Installation worked with 512 MB RAM. Not the same freeze as with beta2, > but the restart after installation was not clean. It froze with only > back-light on, and I had to shut off with the button. After booting the > installed system worked as it should. > > Firefox offered to install flash 'Plugin Finder Service 2', but it got > stuck forever (a bug?). But sudo apt-get flashplugin-installer works and > lets me watch youtube videos. Firefox works reasonably well as installed > with 256 MB RAM (much better than live in the same computer). > > I did not identify any of the old bugs. > > Best regards > Nio Hi, I would have liked to read from your tests if the machine slows down by swapping too early while some memory is still available or if it uses most of the physical RAM before doing so. You could see it by having htop running in a console and keep on eye on proc and ram use at the top of the console while starting and using applications. I have done tests with ZRAM, in an iso I am doing (a personal remix done with ubuntu-builder) and have not finished yet. It consists in once having the configuration default provided by the zram-config package, then in another ISO switch to the configuration I have described before. I still have one test to do which could make a difference. Linux kernels have been known to swap to disk too early since many years, and the following configuration is a mean to limit the too early swappiness. So the test I want to do at last will consist in using the default zram-config configuration and add just this: ********** vm.swappiness=0 vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50 # Uncomment the next line if we are running a laptop # vm.laptop_mode = 1 ********** as a file such as 50-local.conf in /etc/sysctl.d. I wanted to try in Lubuntu but ubuntu-builder has not been able to redo a bootable ISO from from the build directory after I added the file in the Lubuntu filesystem and generated a new ISO. If you have some means of testing this setup in your machine it could be interesting. (As live I fancy it could be done with an install to USB with USB Creator and then having a persistant mode, add the file, and reboot to the persistant mode once more to test the setup, in your install you could just add the setup and see while using and with htop if that makes a difference after some time using Firefox or else?) What I don't know yet either is if having zram module loaded and at work increases the linux kernel swappiness tendency or if it is totally unrelated : I had never wondered about it so far. Regards, Mélodie -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-qa Post to : lubuntu-qa@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-qa More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp | ||
-- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-qa Post to : lubuntu-qa@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-qa More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
