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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU!ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au!lugb!latcs1!latcs4.lat.oz.au!wongm Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Disk Thrashing question Message-ID: <CE57uz.8ts@latcs1.lat.oz.au> From: wongm@latcs4.lat.oz.au (M.C. Wong) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 01:23:23 GMT Sender: news@latcs1.lat.oz.au (news) References: <2884k2$d9k@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <rich.749200452@isr0004.urh.uiuc.edu> <NEWSSERV!STARK!GENE.93Sep28073716@stark.uucp> Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia Nntp-Posting-Host: latcs4.lat.oz.au Lines: 61 In article <NEWSSERV!STARK!GENE.93Sep28073716@stark.uucp> newsserv!stark!gene@cs.sunysb.edu (Gene Stark) writes: >In article <rich.749200452@isr0004.urh.uiuc.edu> rich@isr0004.urh.uiuc.edu (Rich) writes: > > nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes: > > >In article <1993Sep27.170443.444@doug.cae.wisc.edu>, > >John Edward Tillema <tillemaj@cae.wisc.edu> wrote: > >> > >> > >> I have had FreeBSD running for about a month or so on my 486 > >>now, and have noticed one major disadvantage to it compared to Linux > >>(at least for me). It seems to take virtually nothing to cause me > >>to start swapping like crazy, and even hang the system. My setup is: > >>8 Meg Ram, 17 Meg swap space, 486/33, 340 Meg drive, with 300 for Unix. > > ^^^^^^^^^ > > >>If i run anything in the background, or compile one program, or sun > >>a comm program, you can hear the disk swapping like crazy and performance > >>really drops(you can easily type a line of text before the first character > >>is printed). I can even hang the system. I found a good way of doing > >>this is the following: > >> run olvwm. > >> run XV and view a gif (or jpg, or probably anything), not necessarily > >> large, the last one was only 200k. > >> run emacs and load in a large file, here I'm talking about a 7 meg file. > > >With X running (2 - 3 MB), and xv (probably 1 MB with the image displayed) > >the system (2 MB in memory) AND emacs ( 1 MB for emacs + 7 MB for the > >file you're editing ) you've used up more space than you have available. > > I have 8 meg too and I have noticed the same problem... NetBSD hung when > i tried to compile xv. And i was not even in X at the time. I had two > users with screen running. That's ridiculous, When i compiled xv on linux i > >I would say that you don't have your swap area configured properly. >I ran 386BSD 0.1 + (patchkits) for A YEAR with 8MB of RAM and only 10MB >of swap space, and I could run X, Emacs, and compile stuff without running >out of memory. The only time I would run out of memory is if I tried >to run Standard ML while X was running. > >Granted, 386BSD and FreeBSD do not fail gracefully when memory runs out, >but it really sounds like your system is not finding your swap area. >Try running the "swapinfo" command to see what it says. Make sure that >you have the "swapon -a" command in your /etc/rc. Make sure that your >disklabel has your b partition labeled as swap. > > - Gene Stark >-- > stark@cs.sunysb.edu Hi, I used to have this (disk thrashing or swapping) problem too configured with the initial installed 5M swap , thanks to 386BSD installtion procedure that does not let you have control over initial disk partition. But ever since I used a 32M (twice my 16M RAM) swap, things are running smoothly. I used to post this question a few times, and get replies mainly on same reason : run out of swap! Try it! - wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au (M.C Wong) -- - wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au