http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/10/02/tales-from-responsivenessland-why-linu... You'll want to read the whole article but here is the condensed version: Swappiness is the name Linux kernel developers gave to the preference between paging applicatios out to disk and (in practice) shrinking caches. If it’s close to 0, Linux will prefer to keep applications in RAM and not grow the caches. If it’s close to 100, Linux will prefer to swap applications out, and enlarge the caches as much as possible. OK, let’s tune swappiness. In a console as root, run: sysctl -w vm.swappiness=1 To make the change permanent, write vm.swappiness=1 on your /etc/sysctl.conf file. Also, We’ve already established that the filesystem cache is important because, without it, file browsing goes extremely slowly as well. Now we’ll learn how to tell Linux that we want it to prefer inode/dentry cache to other caches. In a root console run: sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50 To make the change permanent, put vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50 on your /etc/sysctl.conf file. Please experiment with this value. Values close to 100 provide no gain. Values close to zero can cause huge swap activity during big filesystem scans. This e-mail transmission and any attachments to it contain information from the Nebraska Department of Revenue which may be confidential and/or privileged pursuant to Nebraska law. The information is intended to be solely for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or other use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify me by return e-mail and delete the information you received in error. -- This message originated from a Linux computer using Open Source software: openSuSE Linux 10.2. No Gates, no Windows....just Linux - STABLE & SECURE! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org