From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 20 19:51:40 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3908B16A407 for ; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:51:40 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0045313C474 for ; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:51:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.13.6/8.13.8) id l0KJpd37007172; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:51:39 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dan) Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:51:39 -0600 From: Dan Nelson To: Zbigniew Szalbot Message-ID: <20070120195139.GC87905@dan.emsphone.com> References: <60131.192.168.11.7.1169279847.squirrel@lists.lc-words.com> <20070120080417.GA4365@xor.obsecurity.org> <60303.192.168.11.7.1169280828.squirrel@lists.lc-words.com> <20070120085137.GA5113@xor.obsecurity.org> <20070120085802.GA5216@xor.obsecurity.org> <60565.192.168.11.7.1169287267.squirrel@lists.lc-words.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <60565.192.168.11.7.1169287267.squirrel@lists.lc-words.com> X-OS: FreeBSD 6.2-PRERELEASE User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: virtual memory management X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:51:40 -0000 In the last episode (Jan 20), Zbigniew Szalbot said: > >> I see lots of them; every one in that list is contributinig. If > >> you add up all those process sizes you'll see where the space is > >> going. > > > > By which I mean the difference between size and res, which indicates > > the amount of process memory allocated but not currently resident in > > RAM. This isn't a foolproof method (see e.g. the FAQ entry on > > rpc.statd), but it's true in your case. > > > >> Basically you are just overloading your system by trying to run > >> too much at once. Reduce the load or add more RAM. > > The problem is I cannot add more RAM (too old machine to do that) but > I know what to do to decrease the load a bit. So thanks for the > pointer! I appreciate it! Also remember that swap usage itself is not a bad thing; it just means the system has moved some unused process data to disk. What /is/ bad is when the system is so low on RAM that is it constantly shuffling data to and from swap just to keep running. This is called thrashing, and you can track it by watching the "##Kb In, ##Kb Out" values on the Swap: line in top, and the "pi" and "po" columns in vmstat output. As long as you don't see constant swapping activity, you're okay. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com