On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 08:00:58 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:

> On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Jan 2020 06:52:42 GMT) it happened Jan Panteltje
>  wrote in :
>
> Follow up think I found the problem, top shows:
>
> MiB Mem :   3906.0 total,     71.6 free,    375.9 used,   3458.6
> buff/cache MiB Swap:    100.0 total,     19.9 free,     80.1 used.
> 3364.1 avail Mem
>
>
> kernel claims all memory space as cache,  that leaves virtually nothing
> (here only 71.6 MB) for programs those programs then start swapping!
>
>
> BAD BAD BAD Linux error!!!!

Linux tries to make use of all free ram for buffers
but ONLY if it is not needed by other applications.
it should free the buffers before swapping only when it cannot recover
enough ram,


for a PI running from a SD card it is better to switch swap off completely

>
> Big thread about it here with possible solutions:
>  https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/253816/restrict-size-of-
buffer-cache-in-linux
>
> I have an old PC running this software with old Slackware kernel with
> maybe 1G of memory for 6 month 24/7 no problem..
> That is where the old setup came from.
> But it had a much bigger swap partition, maybe never noticed this.
>
> What is the point of using all memory for caching?
> Makes no sense to me.
> Is Linux DEAD?





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