From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 18 11:33:07 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CC69616A401 for ; Thu, 18 May 2006 11:33:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from x@vex.net) Received: from smaug.vex.net (smaug.vex.net [66.96.28.243]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 817FE43D5C for ; Thu, 18 May 2006 11:33:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from x@vex.net) Received: from bee.xxvii.x (H140.C18.B96.tor.eicat.ca [66.96.18.140]) by smaug.vex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52A8C264E7 for ; Thu, 18 May 2006 07:33:05 -0400 (EDT) Received: by bee.xxvii.x (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 87EFA1CC72; Thu, 18 May 2006 07:33:07 -0400 (EDT) From: Tim Middleton Organization: xxvii.net To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 07:33:07 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 X-GPG-Fingerprint: F59D 8A8C A8E1 23B5 407D DD30 9069 D1B3 6416 FFB6 X-Whee: Yes, Please. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200605180733.07375.x@vex.net> Subject: why the swapping X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 11:33:07 -0000 Running 6.0-release, with 2 gig ram. Typical memory stats like this (from top): 626M Active, 1045M Inact, 204M Wired, 75M Cache, 112M Buf, 22M Free Under moderately high load i'm seeing a lot of swapping periodically through the day (and then load avg going way, way up, of course). I'm wondering why is there, with so much inactive memory, so much disk swapping? The machine runs some fairly intense stuff, such as squid, postgresql, and zope; but it seems to me there should be enough RAM to cover all of this without swapping. What am I missing? Am i misinterpretting the stats, and just not understanding how the vm works? -- Tim Middleton | Vex.Net | There is a wisdom that is woe; but there x@veX.net | VexTech.ca | is a woe that is madness. --Melville (MD)