On 11/11/06, Gary Winiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
SUMMARY: This case enhances Solaris Zones[1] and builds upon recent work to improve the integration between Zones and Solaris Resource Management[2]. The case addresses an existing RFE[6], which requests a mechanism to limit system swap reserved by a zone. The case also proposes extensions to [2], which will make swap reservation and locked memory resource controls easy to configure on a zone via zonecfg(1m).
I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to bring this up, but there needs to be some clarity to the user community about the definition of swap. Due to the fact that it is not essential to the discussion of the particular ARC case, PSARC-EXT has not been Cc'd. The key places that the term "swap" is exposed to users currently is vmstat(1M) and swap(1M). A search through the relevant sysadmin guides and grepping through /usr/share/man turns up this somewhat unapproachable definition in "System Aministration Guide: Devices and File Systems": The Solaris OS uses the concept of virtual swap space, a layer between anonymous memory pages and the physical storage (or disk-backed swap space) that actually back these pages. A system's virtual swap space is equal to the sum of all its physical (disk-backed) swap space plus a portion of the currently available physical memory. The man pages for vmstat and swap are not especially clear as to whether they are talking about swap space (blocks in a swap device) or "virtual swap space", a term that I have only seen in the Devices and File Systems book. That, combined with the fact that "devices and file systems" is not the first place a person would expect to find this information, frequently leads to a misunderstanding of what the definition of "swap" is. As prstat is changed and resource controls are added to limit swap reservations, it would be extremely helpful to ensure that swap is clearly defined. This likely includes a definition in a man page (time for swapfs(7s)?) and references to that definition in relevant man pages. Mike -- Mike Gerdts http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ zones-discuss mailing list [email protected]
