[LUAU] Running a standard distro without swap space

[Charles Lockhart]

Jim, Angela, Vince, Wayne, thanks!

Yeah, I knew about the embedded linux - no swap partition thing.  I use 
several that don't have (can't have) swap space, everything is running 
out of RAM.  I just wasn't sure if the desktop distros possibly tied 
stuff up differently somehow.

So I did as Vince recommended, and setup up a box to not use the swap 
space.  Works fine, mostly.  After a while I started adding processes, 
eventually exceeded physical memory, and then everything got 
reeeeaaaaalllllllyyyyy ssssslllllllloooooooowwwwww.  But no processes 
were being killed off, and I could still start more.  This confused me.  
I checked around, found references indicating that when both physical 
memory and swap space are full, the mm can start to drop executable code 
from memory, as this can be refreshed from the binary on the regular 
filesystem.  That's the only culprit I could figure out, unless the 
system is building up some swap file unknown to me.

I think the real answer for the instrument is to add more ram and run 
fewer processes.  The balance of contention between reading data from 
one pci bus and then writing processed data over another pci bus to disk 
is delicate at higher speeds anyway.  When the mm starts dumping less 
used stuff to disk, the extra io kills the balance.  Or at least that's 
my thinking.

Thanks for the input and the information.

-Charles