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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!super.zippo.com!zdc!szdc!szdc-e!news From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@freebsd.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Memory problems FreeBSD 2.1.6 Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 22:18:19 -0500 Organization: John S. Dyson's home machine Lines: 31 Message-ID: <329D047B.41C67EA6@freebsd.org> References: <01bbdcbf$36ed3480$1782099a@taco> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.0-CURRENT i386) To: Taco Scargo <taco@webguide.net> Taco Scargo wrote: > > I would be very thankful if one of you could tell me how to fix this > problem. > > I recently installed three Pentium 166 boxes with 256 Mb RAM and 2 Gb HDD > (SCSI via Adaptec 2940 PCI) and SMC EtherPower UTP card. Works fine and > dandy, compiled a new kernel to support all of it. > > However: somehow this nice and dandy caching mechanism of FreeBSD gets me > out of memory fairly quickly. I am running a little BSDI application > (VideoOnDemand server), which loads files, sized about 5 Mb each, skips 4 > frames after each stored (so the memory load should be 5 times as small as > the file sizes). > > What I get is fairly simple to describe: first of all the program uses much > more than the file-sizes divided by 5. I am not too worried about this > problem. > > The problem I am really worried about is the fact that the OS caches all > files that have been opened and does NOT release the memory when system > memory is getting low. > It is first a good idea to find out if you have a problem: are you noticing excessive paging activity? Most of the buffer cache is immediately reclaimable, so that the "cached" pages are actually sort of "free" pages with their identities maintained. John