*BSD News Article 52023


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!agate!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!hookup!nic.wat.hookup.net!metrics.com!tomh
From: tomh@metrics.com (Tom Haapanen)
Subject: Physical memory, swap space and virtual memory
Organization: Software Metrics Inc.
Message-ID: <DFrpsF.H5x@metrics.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 11:41:03 GMT
Lines: 22


Our system has 32 MB of physical memory and two swap partitions (35 MB and
50 MB).  The way I figure it, this should give me 117 MB of virtual memory.

And yet, with around 20 MB in use by various processes, vmstat typically
reports only 6-9 MB (or less!) of virtual memory free.  Further, when our
web pages are getting hit heavily (at 1 MB per httpd invocation), processes
(such as httpd, newsrun, trn, ...) start crashing with out of memory errors.

Shouldn't the system just swap out some processes when necessary?  This
doesn't sound right to me, but I can't find any way of verifying how much
swap space the system is using, not *how* it's using it.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what's going on here?  Why can't I seem to
be able to allocate memory beyond 32 MB?

Thanks...

-- 
[ /tom haapanen -- tomh@metrics.com -- software metrics inc -- waterloo, ont ]
[ "okie use' ta mean you was from oklahoma. now it means you're scum. don't  ]
[  mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it."         -- john steinbeck ]