From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 24 19:15:24 2009 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 01489106566B for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:15:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from stanb@panix.com) Received: from mail2.panix.com (mail2.panix.com [166.84.1.73]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 958FB8FC12 for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:15:23 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mailbackend.panix.com (mailbackend.panix.com [166.84.1.89]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A07B38E4E for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:15:22 -0500 (EST) Received: from teddy.fas.com (c-76-26-200-187.hsd1.sc.comcast.net [76.26.200.187]) by mailbackend.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A9B22D5FB for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:15:22 -0500 (EST) Received: from stan by teddy.fas.com with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1ND0rB-0002X7-00 for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:15:21 -0500 Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:15:21 -0500 From: stan To: Free BSD Questions list Message-ID: <20091124191521.GA9416@teddy.fas.com> Mail-Followup-To: Free BSD Questions list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-Editor: gVim X-Operating-System: Debian GNU/Linux X-Kernel-Version: 2.4.23 X-Uptime: 13:55:29 up 55 days, 21:08, 2 users, load average: 0.04, 0.02, 0.00 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i Sender: Stan Brown Subject: This is to good to be true 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: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:15:24 -0000 I have about a dozen FreeBSD boxes serving a dedicated function. Among other things these machines run a local copy of Firefox, which is updated rapidly by a CGI script. These machines were at 6.2 STABLE, and Firefox 1.x. I am upgrading them to 7.2 STABLE, and Firefox 3. Historically memory leaks in Firefox cause us to have to write a "watchdog" script that killed it an restarted it about once a day, based upon it's active memory set. One of the new machines has been up for several days without having to do this. This is not totally unexpected,as I thought that this had bee improved, if not fixed in newer versions of Firefox. However, I have been keeping a close look on memory utilization using cricket (which acquires it's data using SNMP) and I am blown away by what I am seeing historically ucd_sys free ram has hovered around zero on these systems, Now it grows over time! These machines do have a stable set of applications, and I can rationally see how a well designed kernel might be aggressively freeing RAM given this. If so huge congratulations are due the developers. Dose this seem to be a reasonable belief? -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?