Notices

Personally, I prefer it like now and find it clear enough.

I'd like, now, that someone starts exploring other parameters value to see if we can put together some better set of parameters, or optimize them for various tasks.

I'm currently exploring the effect of vfs_cache_pressure - you'll find references to it both on talk.maemo.org and on the big Internet, in several places where there are discussions on linux desktop tuning.

Vfs_cache_pressure: "Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for caching of directory and inode objects.

At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure = 100 the kernel will attempt to reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer to retain dentry and inode caches. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100 causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes."

Other readings:
http://duopetalflower.blogspot.com/2...speed-and.html
http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-...ow-to-fix-that

Uploaded an updated version (0.2.0-3) in extras-devel and promoted to testing.

This update brings a couple of fixes (there is no new functionality). Both where nasty and quite hidden.

changelog:
* Fix in the update of the VFSCachePressure value. Previous version did not store this correctly. (thanks to debernardis).
* Fix in the reading of values from the system. A hiden linebreak (shown as space) was added in all values after hitting "Current" which blocked their later update.

See the wiki for more details.
Feel free to vote in extras-testing after your tests.

Should be

Found what might be an issue (or perhaps a tool).

Yesterday, I lost all my widgets 2 times. It also happened again this morning. Reboot does not return them, identical activity in Activity Manager does not return them. I can add them all back without issue.

I have been running my own file for a week or two, and swapolube for the last couple of days. I have been using the "kill allocating task" setting (to kill the requesting app).

What I am thinking has happened is that one of my widgets has a memory leak, and hildon-home (or is it hildon-desktop) gets killed once the leak gets too big? This might cause the disappearance of all my widgets.

My first suspicion is calendar-home widget, followed by mycontacts and maybe omweather. I believe those are the only widgets that were updated recently. I need to keep an eye on this to see if I can isolate it.

Anyone else seeing anything similar?

Swappolube (GUI) could give descriptions (from the kernel documentation) to the every setting as a yellow hint window when the text area is clicked. Would be educational and helpful when different tunings are tested.

It's been reported by another guy, maybe on the my-maemo.com forums (can't remind) so you're not alone.

I've been using the kernel VM tweaks I posted, as originally, and have never had this happened.

I'm not sure if this package is a good thing for people to start tuning values they don't understand. Hell, I'm not 100% about the TRUE repercussions of changing them, especially with the hardware and bus that the N900 uses.

Well, Hawaii, we're here to have fun with our device, mostly. Fiddling with tech is fun, and a chance to learn, at every level of knowledge you start from, including close to zero. Albert Einstein started from a compass, a gift from his dad. So, don't worry too much.
Your blog post made me (and others) learn interesting things on our computerphone innards, and made the majority of us have a much more pleasant experience with it. Life's good

I'm only speculating on a cause and effect. The last day or two my N900 had also been unusually sluggish and slow to respond. After updating a couple of widgets today, it is back to its' normal self.

It may just have been a mis-behaving widget, or a combination of these tweaks, widgets, power-kernel, updated modest, updated hildon-desktop, etc. Not exactly running a stock N900 here. If it continues to behave, I'll just chalk it up to a fluke.

Wouldn't be half the fun if we couldn't tweak the heck out of it.

Hmm. Maybe I should report here that with all these settings my hildon-home virtual memory size just kept getting bigger. Also opening up contacts took sometimes little too long to my taste. I ended up disabling all other tweaks expect swappiness and cache pressure. Now it seems to be ok.

.edit
swappines 30, pressure 50

..edit
looks like hildon-desktop and home are leaking for me. Probably some faulty widget or applet. I just wish that we had easy way of detecting what widgets&applets leak.