Jeremy Messenger wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 15:53:21 -0400, Bill Moran
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ahmed Al-Hindawi wrote:
Hi,
I have 160Mb of SDRAM (PC100) on a 233Mhz CyrixInstead machine and I
seem to have memory mangament problems. The BIOS indicates I have 160,
so does the BSD bootstrap program.
When I launch GNOME 2.2 everythings is good as gold untill I open the
System monitor program. It says that I have 149 Mb of RAM which is fine
( 4Mb of video..and the rest...god knows).
I open every program I have and after 107Mb the machine starts to swap
with about 50Mb left unused!!
I recompliled the GENERIC kernal for the sake of it really (Im still an
amature) I didn't mess with the configuration files or anything (I just
don't know how!!).
Is this normal or mismanagement of memory in the 5.1 version of the
excellent FreeBSD kernel??
The mistake is in the way the Gnome System Monitor display the free
memory.
I just watched both 'top' and the System Monitor as I opened program
after
program until the system started swapping, and System monitor reports
almost 100M free while top reported less than 10M.
To _always_ have a little memory free is A Good Thing(tm). FreeBSD has
some pretty advanced memory management that will start swapping _before_
the system runs out of RAM. However, the System Monitor's display of
this is simply inaccurate. There was NOT 100M free when it started
swapping
on my system.
Well, the 5.0, old -CURRENT and 4.8 have never touch the swap, until
5.1- CURRENT. My system has 256mb ram and it's always touch swap now. If
I compile some stuff, sometime it will get around 300mb swap. Current, I
only have Gnome 2.3.x and Opera running, so what my top looks like this:
Well, the old YMMV applies, but I'm not seeing this kind of behaviour.
I'm also not running 5.1-CURRENT, but 5.1-RELEASE, so it may be a newly
introduced problem. The original poster didn't specify whether he was
using -CURRENT or 5.1-RELEASE.
Mem: 85M Active, 29M Inact, 51M Wired, 4496K Cache, 35M Buf, 73M Free
Swap: 512M Total, 79M Used, 433M Free, 15% Inuse
Did something use most of the memory up to start the system swapping?
If it started using swap while there was still 73M free, then that's new
to me.
But, I will remove the Gnome System Monitor applet, then reboot and see
how it goes for the whole afternoon.
I'm not saying that Gnome System Monitor is causing the problem, I'm just
saying that it reports inaccurate numbers.
--
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com
_______________________________________________
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
