I'm posting here because I'm using fossapup, but it may be more a general pupswap question.
I ususally set up a pupswap file just in case some application gums up the ram, but on an old Dell Inspiron i5 laptop that I have with 3.65GB of usable ram, mounting the pupswap seems to cause the machine to use the swapfile when it doesn't appear to need to do so, which causes major lags in keyboard and mouse response.
I was doing a lot of file copying from midnight commander, and so I monitored the system using HTOP while trying to use other applications during the copy process. Basically HTOP reports very low CPU and RAM usuage, the RAM being somewhere around 1.5-2gb full at any point and a good 1-1.5gb still free. But the swapfile is swapping in 6-20mb at a time, causing the system to sporadically lag.
Unmounting the pupswap solves the issue. But it makes me wonder:
Is using a pupswap file really beneficial at all? Presumably it keeps the system from crashing in a pinch, but at what point does the system decide it needs to cache to the swap?