Page faults with physical I/O on Linux

Okay, I've been lurking on this list for long enough, time to ask a
question :)

I've read a good portion of the docs (FAQ, Users Guide, and Release Notes)
and I think I've decided that the squid box I've set up is paging an
abnormal amount.

Machine details:
RedHat 5.0
Kernel 2.0.33 with FDs patched to 4096
128 MB of RAM
SCSI Disks
3600 MB of cache space on a single drive (about 1/3 full right now)
OS and swap on seperate drive on same controller

Squid versions 1.1.20+retry and 1.NOVM.20+retry tried.

I've also compiled the GNU Malloc library.

An average day sees a large number of hits over a short period (lunchtime
at the school), light activity the rest of the day, and almost no hits
from 9 pm to 7 am.

I'm mostly wondering what an abnormal level of paging is (about 1 to 1 or
greater is whats in the FAQ), and how to adjust the parameters to lower
the amount of paging. If anyone is interested, I'd love to have a
reccomendation on how you would configure squid with these amounts of RAM
and disk space. I've got a webpage setup that has many of the steps I went
through in setting up the machine, with much thought, and I'd like to
share it with other smaller school districts who have a need to reduce
traffic on their Internet connections, but I'd like to get a handle on the
amount of paging first.

BTW, that URL is http://brain.hoopeston.k12.il.us/inetsrv/squid.html
if anyone cares to look.

Also, the cache manager is on cache.hoopeston.k12.il.us in the usual
place, if that might help the analysis.

Thank you very much for all help,
Corey Betka
Unix SysAdmin
Hoopeston Area Schools
Senior in Computer Science, College of Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Received on Mon Apr 06 1998 - 13:59:28 MDT