I just saw this issue again on 3.8.0-9. Current memory usage (after the swap storm calmed down):
$ free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3842480 3735332 107148 0 4216 1133784 -/+ buffers/cache: 2597332 1245148 Swap: 6291452 682164 5609288 $
vm.swappiness=30. The flash blocker extension is still in place in my browser.
It seems like the kernel is somehow unhappy to let its page cache drop below 1.2GB in size, and tries really hard to prevent that by swapping other things around?
I just saw this issue again on 3.8.0-9. Current memory usage (after the swap storm calmed down):
$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3842480 3735332 107148 0 4216 1133784
-/+ buffers/cache: 2597332 1245148
Swap: 6291452 682164 5609288
$
vm.swappiness=30. The flash blocker extension is still in place in my browser.
It seems like the kernel is somehow unhappy to let its page cache drop below 1.2GB in size, and tries really hard to prevent that by swapping other things around?