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Date:      Wed, 7 Jun 1995 04:08:09 -0400
From:      Temptation <temp@temptation.interlog.com>
To:        owner-freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Top 
Message-ID:  <Pine.3.89.9506070344.A724-0100000@temptation.interlog.com>
In-Reply-To: <199506070748.DAA00612@napier.math.psu.edu>

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On Wed, 7 Jun 1995 owner-freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com wrote:
 
> > I seen some people talking (err typing) about Top here, and problems with 
> > it not reporting correctly, are there commands to see memfree that work? 
> > and also swapfile %.  I have 256megs, and 25 meg swap, and I'm getting
> > /Kernel: swap_pager: out of space
> > ( yes the Kernel is set up for the memory, and /var/log/messages picks up 
> > the memory correctly with no errors) 
> > Top says I'm using 100% swap, and only 24megs.
> > If it is using the swap space, is there a way to force to use the ram 
> > before the swap?
> 
> If I read this correctly, you are saying you have 256 Megs of physical memory 
> and 25 Megs of swap? Unless I am mistaken, this is your problem. FreeBSD does
> demand paging, which means that when a program is run it is first loaded into
> pagespace and then when it goes to start the first instruction of the 
> executable, it performs a page fault and loads the first page and continues on 
> from there. Some OS's do this in a different way where they mmap the 
> executable on the disk and page off of that, which is what I believe SunOS 
> does. Now this could all be wrong, but what I am about to say might not be.
> 
> As I explained this above, everything that you run must first find it some swap
> space, meaning, you can only use as much memory as you have swap. That is why
> it is a general rule, at least with what I have heard, that you have 2 1/2 
> times as much swap as you have memory. Now, in your case that would explain 
> why you have used 100% of your swap space and only 25 Megs of ram. Now, just 
> add 256 Megs of swap and you'll be set. You could always give me some of that 
> mem :)

well if thats true, it's stupid! Windows/NT/Warp  do that also. 
Linux doesn't tho. it only starts using the swap space if I use more 
then 64meg. I'll try adding more swap anyway and see what happens. But
the whole reason to add more memory, is so I don't have to make large 
swap file, and have a slow system. And to use the disk for was it was 
made for, storing files. Reminds me of running a 286 with Dos 3.3 4megs, 
and little cheap program that convered Disk space to Extended. And that 
was more then 8 years ago :) guess we haven't come as far as we thought.
I can't wait till IBM's 1gig simms hit the retail market, we'll have to 
make 2.5 gig space becuase the OS's wont use the memory first.
 > 
> (I am running it on 8 :( )
> 
> -Ken Wilcox
> > 
> > thanks for all replys to my X pty problem, I can open 256, if can I 
> > solve the memory problem :)
> > 
> 



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