From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 9 16:47:29 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D4B816A400 for ; Wed, 9 May 2007 16:47:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tom.hurst@clara.net) Received: from spork.qfe3.net (spork.qfe3.net [212.13.207.101]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4317513C458 for ; Wed, 9 May 2007 16:47:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tom.hurst@clara.net) Received: from [81.104.144.87] (helo=voi.aagh.net) by spork.qfe3.net with esmtp (Exim 4.66 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1Hlp3k-000BZI-Ux; Wed, 09 May 2007 17:30:37 +0100 Received: from freaky by voi.aagh.net with local (Exim 4.66 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1Hlp3c-000K4X-Jx; Wed, 09 May 2007 17:30:28 +0100 Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 17:30:28 +0100 From: Thomas Hurst To: Bill LeFebvre Message-ID: <20070509163028.GA73424@voi.aagh.net> Mail-Followup-To: Bill LeFebvre , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <4641CFDA.9020805@lefebvre.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4641CFDA.9020805@lefebvre.org> Organization: Not much. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.15 (2007-04-06) Sender: Thomas Hurst Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: top shows '' X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 16:47:29 -0000 * Bill LeFebvre (bill@lefebvre.org) wrote: > The <> are only used when the process flag PS_INMEM is clear, which > is supposed to indicate that the process is or is not "in memory". > This flag is only ever cleared in swapout, called from swapout_procs. > My bet is that the processes are being marked for swap but the dirty > pages never actually go anywhere since you don't have a backing > store. Maybe someone more familiar with the inner workings of the VM > system can fill us in on what happens on a system with no swap. I'm seeing this sort of thing too -- I do have swap, but it's not being used by these processes (swapoff -a didn't do anything to them): Mem: 1672M Active, 5337M Inact, 279M Wired, 400M Cache, 215M Buf, 74M Free Swap: 10G Total, 12K Used, 10G Free 1251 www 1 4 0 87884K 0K accept 2 0:00 0.00% 1106 root 1 20 0 12756K 0K pause 1 0:00 0.00% 950 root 1 115 0 8536K 0K select 3 0:00 0.00% 1143 mysql 1 8 0 5220K 0K wait 3 0:00 0.00% 1288 root 1 5 0 3644K 0K ttyin 2 0:00 0.00% The bulk of the data is probably "swapped" to the on-disk binaries, but this would imply there isn't a single page unique to each process. Quite why it's bothering in the first place with >5GB Inact I'm not sure -- is it unmapping idle processes to conserve VM objects? I also find it interesting that I only noticed this behavior a few days ago and suddenly someone else mentions it too :) -- Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst http://hur.st/