Comment 92 for bug 1518457

Fresh install of 16.04 on EC2 Nano instance, and kswapd0 takes most of the CPU when running a job with high CPU and high IO.

I've resorted to running the following command every minute as a cron task:

    # m h dom mon dow command
    * * * * * echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

That works for 10 or 15 seconds, but after that kswapd0 comes back and hogs the CPU again.

I'm using less than 20% of available memory, shouldn't need to swap.

See attached screenshot of top at the 25-second mark after dropping caches.