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From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net>
Message-Id: <199605181947.OAA00359@dyson.iquest.net>
Subject: Re: VSZ, RSS, and -STABLE
To: nirva@mail.zynet.com (Danny Dulai)
Date: Sat, 18 May 1996 14:47:31 -0500 (EST)
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199605181759.LAA03434@ns1.zynet.com> from "Danny Dulai" at May 18, 96 11:59:10 am
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> what exactly does the VSZ column in ps aux mean?  I am told
> that its the total ram a process takes up and RSS is how much
> memory is in the core, but my ps aux output shows about half
> the processes with a larger RSS than VSZ.
> 
VSZ is the total virtual space in a process (.text+.data+.bss+sbrk),
but DOES NOT INCLUDE mmaped regions including shared libs.  Shared
libs or other mmapped regions is the reason that the resident size
is bigger than the virtual size.  The RSS DOES include all currently
mapped pages.

John
dyson@freebsd.org