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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.vbc.net!garlic.com!fox.almaden.ibm.com!uunet!in2.uu.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!blackbush.xlink.net!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de!news.ruhr-uni-bochum.de!news.rwth-aachen.de!newsserver.rrzn.uni-hannover.de!tubsibr!malibu.ts.rz.tu-bs.de!not-for-mail From: mb@malibu.ts.rz.tu-bs.de (Martin Butkus) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD a memory hog ? Date: 2 Apr 1996 19:29:57 +0200 Organization: TU Braunschweig, Germany Lines: 40 Distribution: world Message-ID: <4jro6l$92m@malibu.ts.rz.tu-bs.de> References: <dkleinh.828415914@isotope.ps.uci.edu> Reply-To: M.Butkus@tu-bs.de NNTP-Posting-Host: rzrtr1.rz.tu-bs.de X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Originator: y0001415@ws.rz.tu-bs.de Dirk Kleinhesselink (dkleinh@isotope.ps.uci.edu) wrote: : I am running FreeBSD 2.1 on a P-100 with 16MB ram and 16MB swap. When I : run netscape, after awhile, netscape is killed by the kernel with the message : that the swap space is exhausted. I also have Linux and I have never had : netscape crash due to insufficient memory on Linux. I have the same amount : of swap when I run Linux and about the same number of processes. I thought : FreeBSD had better memory management than Linux. I used to run Linux with : only 8-MB ram and never had it kill netscape. Where is all the memory going ? Do a ps alx and have a look at the "VSZ" column. As I understand it, the RAM needs to be backed up with swap space on disk because of the swapping algorithm FreeBSD uses. Thus, you only have 16 MB of virtual memory instead of 32 MB which won't be enough. Maybe Linux is different in respect to this. You'll probably have to increase the swapspace. For example, I have 60 MB of swap and 16 MB of RAM and the system is running very smoothly with it. It is possible to increase swap without re-partitioning, but it's complicated. See the archive of the mailinglists. BTW, I have the impression that FreeBSD uses more virtual memory but is a bit faster than Linux despite of this, especially when swapping. On my system (X11, some xterms, bash's and vi's & some other stuff, inn, hylafax but no netscape): bash$ /usr/sbin/swapinfo Device 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Type /dev/sd0b 122880 53272 69480 43% Interleaved 25 MB. So increase your swap to about 32 MB or more and you should be settled. -- Martin Butkus >>> Live long and prosper. <<< Phone/Fax: +49.5331.298710 Am Stadtwege 10, 38304 Wolfenbuettel, Germany