From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 26 19:41:35 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D3325106566C for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:41:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@m.gmane.org) Received: from plane.gmane.org (plane.gmane.org [80.91.229.3]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 897458FC15 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:41:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SNUZE-0004vV-VQ for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:41:29 +0200 Received: from np-19-75.prenet.pl ([np-19-75.prenet.pl]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:41:28 +0200 Received: from jb.1234abcd by np-19-75.prenet.pl with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:41:28 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: jb Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:41:16 +0000 (UTC) Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <2FCC4ECF-DAC2-4701-B392-B0415528A4C7@mac.com> <20120426190304.0ec3330f@gumby.homeunix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: sea.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 79.139.19.75 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD i386; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.2) Subject: Re: FreeBSD vice OS X memory management X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:41:35 -0000 RW googlemail.com> writes: > ... > > ... > > "2) Inactive memory (which is memory that has been recently used but > > is no longer) is supposed to be seamlessly reclaimed automatically by > > the OS when needed for new programs. In practice, I’ve found that > > this isn’t the case, and my system slows to a crawl and starts paging > > out to disk when free memory drops to zero, even as half of the > > available RAM (which is a lot) is marked as inactive. ..." > > That's not a good description of inactive memory, most of which > contains useful data. The situation described is undesirable, but not > abnormal. It can happen when your physical memory is spread thinly, but > most of it isn't being frequently accessed. In that case the inactive > queue can be dominated by dirty swap-backed pages. > ... Would implementing the VM pageout algorithm in such a way that it would mix in equal proportion the current least-actively used algo and the old least-recently used algo help the situation ? jb