From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 16 14:48:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0418F16A4CE for ; Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:48:05 +0000 (GMT) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (clunix.cl.msu.edu [35.9.2.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D10343D48 for ; Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:48:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: (from jerrymc@localhost) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.11.7p1+Sun/8.11.7) id j2GEl8A27507; Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:47:08 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister Message-Id: <200503161447.j2GEl8A27507@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org (Lowell Gilbert) Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:47:08 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <44fyyvmzxt.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> from "Lowell Gilbert" at Mar 16, 2005 09:24:14 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: "Colin J. Raven" cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Illogical usage of swap X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:48:05 -0000 > > "Colin J. Raven" writes: > > > On Mar 16 at 07:29, Lowell Gilbert launched this into the bitstream: > > > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#TOP-FREEMEM > > > > Hmm, yeah I should have included what I've actually read in the > > handbook and elsewhere. In fact I did read that exerpt you quoted the > > URL for above sometime previously, when it was quoted in another > > thread on the list. > > > > Free memory (or the lack thereof) isn't the issue though. > > > > The issue is this: > > Swap: 8192M Total, 116K Used, 8192M Free > > and that's the piece of the puzzle that has us all utterly baffled. > > The same logic applies to some extent, though. > > > No way in creation this box should be swapping. > > I have noticed that FreeBSD 5.x is swapping out small amounts of > memory in situations (as near I can tell; it is quite hard to be sure > that the situation is really identical) where 4.x was not. I haven't > really tried to track down exactly what's going on, but it's always > been less than the text segment of any task in the system, so I was > pretty sure I wasn't seeing a problem. Swap space is also used for paging. If you are running through some big file or have processes that are live but not active, they can use up some page space. That space just stays there until it is needed otherwise. At least that is my understanding. ////jerry