*BSD News Article 11494


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From: burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: A comment on 0.1 + 0.2.1 patchkit's stability
Date: 18 Feb 1993 08:51:26 -0600
Organization: Armstrong Lab MIS, Brooks AFB TX
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References: <CGD.93Feb17150814@gaia.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <GENE.93Feb18171500@stark.stark.uucp>
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In article <GENE.93Feb18171500@stark.stark.uucp> gene@stark.uucp (Gene Stark) writes:
>
>I was wondering if others were seeing this type of problem.  I have noticed
>that if a process allocates a large amount of memory so that its RSS is
>increased, then those page frames seem to become permanently attached to
>that process, even once they leave the RSS.  For example, try starting
>Emacs and reading in a couple of MB.  Then kill the buffer with the stuff
>in it and wait for things to settle down.  You will see Emacs with a low
>RSS, but active processes do not get the page frames that Emacs once had.
>

  The particular problem with Emacs was recently discussed in *.emacs.*
somewhere.  As I recall from that interaction, Emacs does not release the
memory although the buffer has been emptied.  It seems to me that it was
a 'feature' of Emacs so that it wouldn't have to go to the trouble of
reallocating memory pages.  
  On the other hand, it may be that I dreamed the whole thing, too....


-- 
------
TSgt Dave Burgess
NCOIC AL/Management Information Systems Office
Brooks AFB, TX