From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 26 02:09:13 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 11AED16A4CE for ; Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:09:13 +0000 (GMT) Received: from aeimail.aei.ca (mail.aei.ca [206.123.6.14]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 503AB43D45 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:09:12 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from premi@altern.org) Received: from [10.0.0.1] (dsl-131-80.aei.ca [66.36.131.80]) by aeimail.aei.ca (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i9Q297LA024425 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:09:11 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v619) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <0327434A-26F4-11D9-A907-0030658DC702@altern.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org From: "R. Payette" Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:09:05 -0400 X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619) X-Mailman-Approved-At: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:55:45 +0000 Subject: Disk buffer / memory utilization X-BeenThere: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Performance/tuning List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:09:13 -0000 I'm trying to get the best performances from a ratter limited system. My question is 2 fold : 1- the 'buf' column in top, I thought freebsd ( and other modern OSes ) used free memory for disk buffer until it is required for something else. But I see on my system that the 'buf' is always 14 M no matter the load on the server, even in heavy swapping situations, it remains 14 M. 2- how to reduce the wired memory ? I have a lean custom built kernel and 17M ( around 22M after a few hour of utilization ) is a little to much to be normal. I mean, out of the 64M this machine has, 36M are locked out by the bare system which has, a network card, a hard disk and an unused video card ( headless machine ). Is there something I can tune in sysctl or my kernel conf ? or is it a concept I don't get correctly ? Thanks for any help, pointers