From owner-freebsd-current@freebsd.org Sun Mar 13 14:55:54 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CAFEDACFA67 for ; Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:55:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwmaillists@googlemail.com) Received: from mail-wm0-x230.google.com (mail-wm0-x230.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:400c:c09::230]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6A83AE85 for ; Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:55:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwmaillists@googlemail.com) Received: by mail-wm0-x230.google.com with SMTP id l68so72552382wml.1 for ; Sun, 13 Mar 2016 07:55:54 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlemail.com; s=20120113; h=date:from:to:cc:subject:message-id:in-reply-to:references :mime-version:content-transfer-encoding; bh=BPnyY68nMtSGkSJjTqNp0ROQnC7EOR9cI6JVOTnWuqg=; b=G+6EJagZqvPKciZxfcGIht7u+U/jniW6VSrRzcodHYj4Tk5oIp2dXMV4B4Q7sDx6QR rEwaxYJ8v2YIhbOEffqsD15fC53bV1xj5D79f68ozegrku2r7Xcb7IakAOz99L0HRZmH 3rTa29MV/lLP1wOOyUL5HMQx21x4kNKN/bWtMnmYScSYFGPSoJnHZZnPcOa+Nz0hTKC9 M1WHbRJZ6ZaNk0rG+DUMp8PjzpCnfIVMmfu3GHs0WoF9HQCHrcnQGFMWr6wyfUV0lppF kPNhMrGCiLksCYwNuVmTh65COmCfTHZTIxsKL+ZmjpiibLeTNhljn2ERKePEHmQUMN94 IAJw== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:date:from:to:cc:subject:message-id:in-reply-to :references:mime-version:content-transfer-encoding; bh=BPnyY68nMtSGkSJjTqNp0ROQnC7EOR9cI6JVOTnWuqg=; b=TwsVb5tBzLc0u+p9Quq8YNC+BrQ1+5A2NLFr6RzLX3maaccRj6C2kKjL3KH438NzmB 7at3iHnO2q0SDw9ht/q7klVKEQAxDMMKD0BMvA2tSktOIFIVMEtRqR4jWknbcZwMYhDF 8B96KQGEh4SY5jEJjEgh944JzWAHLl+oKhWhtQaPA+PfLts5n1YBtymanAb1TsPv1dWo v5VhqgElErt5+R/mYT6hsgnJE+pOTVqXn3BVNl0cZd92rDNimVg6TcNU28DkbKWe8Poy 2hqEZwNGxK0UZJjKJe6BRAtXJvBt65ekAXigemdrNdi4aAzMxycLISqjO/mTDncyowm7 yl/g== X-Gm-Message-State: AD7BkJLs0gzeRN9DGpEABsPcmikA5lTrJxvL7XJtRjpYae3mldyggY7v+5lVBtYBTxuIjA== X-Received: by 10.28.211.1 with SMTP id k1mr14024086wmg.93.1457880952917; Sun, 13 Mar 2016 07:55:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gumby.homeunix.com ([90.195.211.158]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id w133sm11838436wmd.3.2016.03.13.07.55.50 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 13 Mar 2016 07:55:51 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:55:48 +0000 From: RW To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: how to recycle Inact memory more aggressively? Message-ID: <20160313145548.4e011152@gumby.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20160312093835.727d7197@ernst.home> References: <20160312093835.727d7197@ernst.home> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.13.2 (GTK+ 2.24.29; amd64-portbld-freebsd10.2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:55:54 -0000 On Sat, 12 Mar 2016 09:38:35 +0100 Gary Jennejohn wrote: > In the course of the last year or so the behavior of the vm system > has changed in regard to how aggressively Inact memory is recycled. > > My box has 8GB of memory. At the moment I'm copying 100s of gigabytes > from one file system to another one. > > Looking at top I observe that there are about 6GB of Inact memory. > This value hardly changes. Instead of aggressively recycling the > Inact memory the vm now seems to prefer to swap. Paging-out is a side-effect of processing inactive memory. As the inactive queue is recycled a small number of pages can get copied out to swap with the contents remaining in memory. If you turn this off, the writes to can end up being done while something is waiting, rather than in the background. A small amount of swap in use is normal. If you see a large amount then check for memory leaks and unwanted files on tmpfs.