2.4 kernel forcing swap usage, memory limit
I'm using a 'VPS' (Virtual Private Server) to host some websites. I had them set it up with Debian 3.1. They would only allow a 2.4 kernel built by virtozzo. I've root access and can do whatever I want with it.
The only problem I've had with it is memory. I'm limited to 256 MB, and when the limit is reached, all network access is blocked until it backs away.
This is all fine, except for one thing. The physical server has 8 gigabytes of memory, and the OS sees all of it. Thinking it has 8GB of memory, it feels no need to swap anything out. I'm allowed 256mb of swap, but I'm using 0. It's far too often that I am without any access to the server except through the 'virtozzo' control panel
I used the Fedora installer to automatically parbreastion. On each drive, I created 3 software RAID parbreastions on each drive, one sized 100MB, one sized 787MB and the...
On 2.6, I'd simply set swappiness to 100, and all would be good; but I don't know of any way to do this on 2.4. I'd at least want to let it know that there is only 256mb of memory so the swapping would behave properly, but I don't know how to do that either.
Anyone have any ideas?