Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 11:05:09 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SV: Inactive memory in FreeBSD Message-ID: <06319CE3-CB18-11D6-ABD2-000A27D85A7E@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <E01A200E2339D311AF7E00508B319A2B04C84713@expers.aabc.dk>
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On Wednesday, September 18, 2002, at 09:19 AM, pzw@aabc.dk wrote:
> However, when you compile a program or FTP a file to the server, the
> chances
> of you doing that over and over again is almost null, therefore caching
> these processes are a total waste.
Caching pages used by the FTP daemon or the C compiler executables in
memory isn't a total waste, because those processes are running. Note
that the system will not cache an excessive amount of the files being used
by those programs; the disk I/O buffer is constrained.
> So, FreeBSD is best used for a server system, where you have more RAM than
> you use for all normal activity, and to prevent some seldom used tasks to
> hog up memory, you should reboot often.
FreeBSD makes a good server system.
All well-designed systems perform better when the amount of physical RAM
available is greater than their VM working set.
I don't think your analysis of memory usage is correct.
Take a look at the resident size (RSS), not the VM size (VSZ).
However, you may have a program that is leaking memory, which is causing
the swapfile to fill up. Killing that process will solve the problem
without having to reboot.
You should never need to reboot FreeBSD, short of reinstalling the kernel.
> As a workstation system, you're better of using Windows or Linux, unless
> ofc. You're a secretary using the same word processor program day in and
> day
> out.
Opinion. Besides, platform advocacy is off topic.
> IMHO it would be a far better solution, for you to be able to specify the
> maximum amount of memory that a program could hog up, so you don't have to
> reboot all the time to free memory.
RTFM. You can specify the maximum amount of memory that a program can
use-- see "man setrlimit" or the "limit" command in the shell:
int
setrlimit(int resource, const struct rlimit *rlp);
DESCRIPTION
Limits on the consumption of system resources by the current process
and
each process it creates may be obtained with the getrlimit() call, and
set with the setrlimit() call.
The resource parameter is one of the following:
RLIMIT_CORE The largest size (in bytes) core(5) file that may be
cre-
ated.
RLIMIT_CPU The maximum amount of cpu time (in seconds) to be
used by
each process.
RLIMIT_DATA The maximum size (in bytes) of the data segment for a
process; this defines how far a program may extend its
break with the sbrk(2) system call.
[ ... ]
RLIMIT_RSS The maximum size (in bytes) to which a process's
resident
set size may grow. This imposes a limit on the
amount of
physical memory to be given to a process; if memory is
tight, the system will prefer to take memory from pro-
cesses that are exceeding their declared resident set
size.
RLIMIT_STACK The maximum size (in bytes) of the stack segment for
a
process; this defines how far a program's stack
segment
may be extended. Stack extension is performed
automati-
cally by the system.
-Chuck
Chuck Swiger | chuck@codefab.com | All your packets are belong to
us.
-------------+-------------------+-----------------------------------
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts
is to ignore them." -Celia Green
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