On Jan 12, 2005, at 12:10 PM, James Morgan wrote:
I just checked the activity monitor and my system is using several times more virtual memory than RAM memory. I have 1.5 GB of RAM in this G4. Is there a way to turn off virtual memory in OS X?
No, and this illustrates the thorny issue of understanding memory management under Unix. This is a hard subject to grok; it's not as simple as VM under OS 9 or Windows.
A large number of pageouts does NOT necessarily indicate that you're out of RAM, or even that your system is swapping excessively.
RAM is also paged out routinely when that memory isn't accessed for a long period of time, as well as when memory is needed. So if I have 15 or 20 processes idling along, their memory may be swapped out pre-emptively to enure that something needing a pile of memory quickly can get it. It's a tuning thing.
When you're doing a lot of pageouts when *using* the system, then you're constrained by RAM.
You're not, barring really large datasets or a LOT of processes running at once.
-- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pha cy Information Technology Group
Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs
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