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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!sgigate!odin!blythe
- From: blythe@sgi.com (David Blythe)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi.misc
- Subject: Re: Resident Set Size Confusion
- Message-ID: <1993Jan6.072923.9471@odin.corp.sgi.com>
- Date: 6 Jan 93 07:29:23 GMT
- References: <syscrc.726293940@gsusgi1.gsu.edu>
- Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
- Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
- Lines: 54
- Nntp-Posting-Host: banshee.asd.sgi.com
-
- In article <syscrc.726293940@gsusgi1.gsu.edu> syscrc@pickle.gsu.edu (Randy Carpenter) writes:
- >We have a 4d/380s with 128MB of physical memory. It's used for
- >computational chemistry. Although there's plenty of available memory,
- >long running processes never seem to stay completely resident as evident
- >from the top(1) listing below. Why does this happen?
-
- The short answer is that only the recently referenced memory pages stay
- resident. The OS always keeps track of what is has not being referenced
- recently and makes these pages available for other uses. Just because
- you have lots of empty empty space isn't a good reason to keep around a lot
- of junk you may never look at again.
-
- >
- >Ocassionally, these processes will be killed due to insufficient swap
- >storage although we think there is plenty of available memory. The
- >current swap is 48MB and we will be expanding it to 128MB soon.
- >
-
- I believe that if you have a process which has grown larger than the size
- of free swap space and the OS chooses to swap it out, it must swap it out in
- its entirety and at that point it has no choice but to kill the process.
- 40Mb is a little small, 120Mb is much better but it depends on the mix
- you run. /etc/swap -l will give you an idea of how much swap space is
- actually being used ...
- -db
-
- >% top
- >
- >IRIX chemistry 4.0.1 11150233 IP7 Load[18.03,18.09,18.09] 23:13:15 500 procs
- > user pid pgrp %cpu proc pri size rss time command
- > david 5641 381 56.8 5 105 3762 1656 4075:36 sybyl.40exe
- > hui 7331 278 54.5 0 100 14596 1611 2570:55 charmm21r3exe
- > david 5644 381 53.4 6 105 3762 1656 4467:02 sybyl.40exe
- > david 5643 381 52.3 2 105 3762 1656 4348:27 sybyl.40exe
- > david 469 381 52.3 * 105 3758 1652 4799:24 sybyl.40exe
- > david 470 381 52.3 * 105 3758 1652 4934:03 sybyl.40exe
- > david 468 381 52.3 * 105 3758 1652 4657:29 sybyl.40exe
- > david 467 381 51.1 * 105 3758 1652 4510:05 sybyl.40exe
- > david 5640 381 48.9 1 105 3762 1656 3890:10 sybyl.40exe
- > david 5642 381 48.9 4 105 3762 1656 4215:52 sybyl.40exe
- > tom 22880 15490 45.5 * 104 8390 2578 1060:34 sp_property
- > david 466 381 40.9 * 105 3758 1652 4321:41 sybyl.40exe
- > david 5639 381 39.8 * 105 3762 1656 3598:38 sybyl.40exe
- > david 465 381 37.5 * 105 3758 1652 4023:00 sybyl.40exe
- > david 5638 381 31.8 7 105 3762 1656 3130:09 sybyl.40exe
- > david 464 381 29.5 * 105 3758 1652 3548:53 sybyl.40exe
- > david 5637 381 28.4 * 105 3762 1656 2622:47 sybyl.40exe
- > david 411 381 23.9 * 105 3758 1652 3042:21 sybyl.40exe
- >%
- >--
- >===========================================================================
- >Randy Carpenter rcarpent@gsu.edu % Got a light?
- >Georgia State University (404) 651-2648 No match.
- >Wells Computer Center %
-