*BSD News Article 69326


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From: "Amancio Hasty Jr." <hasty@star-gate.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBSD ... (FreeBSD extremely mem/swap hungry)
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 12:42:49 -0700
Organization: TLGnet Inc., (formerly The Little Garden)
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Message-ID: <31A61139.41C67EA6@star-gate.com>
References: <3188C1E2.45AE@onramp.net> <4mnsc5$6qo@sundial.sundial.net> <4mr1pk$cdi@dyson.iquest.net> <4n0dhd$cff@agate.berkeley.edu> <3194622D.41C67EA6@Ami-chan.res.cmu.edu> <31A52667.794BDF32@zeus.co.uk>
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Damian Reeves wrote:
> 
> Yun-Ching (Allen) Lee wrote:
> >
> 
> > Performance:  Since I only have a 486DX 33 with 20 MB of RAM, I want >
> > to squeeze every last bit of performance out of it.  When I was using
> > Linux with 35 MB of swap, I have never let the swap usage go above 20
> > MB when running X.  Because, around that number, the disk swapping
> > becomes horrendously slow.  When using FreeBSD, I can hardly feel the > lag caused by swapping, but the processes take more real and swap
> > memory.
> 
> Your damm right they do!  I think the FreeBSD developer's are subsidised
> by ram and harddrive manufactures.
> 
> We took a 32mb machine here which was running Linux and converted it to
> running FreeBSD 2.1 for porting purposes.  On the Linux box, after
> booting up, running X11R6, opening a few xterms, xbiff etc., a 'top'
> would show that about 10mb of memory was in use, and around 18Mb was
> used for buffer cache, an no swap space in use.
> 
> On replacing with BSD, and copying over the .xsession files etc., by the
> time the Xserver and xterms have started, 50MB of swap is in use!!!
> I had to increase the swap space upto 250Mb just so we could actually
> compile our server code.  At the moment, the machine is sitting there
> with 1 user logged in, emacs, netscape and a couple of shells. top
> reports that 59% of the swap space is in use!  top also reports that
> only 860k is available for buffer cache, in fact I've never seen it go
> over 1200k.  This is extremely different to under linux, where it used
> to stay around 12Mb-15Mb under use.
> 
> Now, one has to ask WHY?  The Linux box could have all these apps in and
> more with less than a couple of Mb in swap if any.  Another related
> issue is that FreeBSD seems a lot more swap-happy than Linux.  If I
> leave the emacs alone for a couple of minutes, when I return to it I
> have to wait a good few seconds of hard-drive thrashing before it will
> response to my keystrokes.  This paging also seems to lock the entire
> machine at lot more than under linux (EIDE drive subsystem).
> 
> However, on saying that, the server does actually compile marginally
> faster than under Linux, although this might be due to the slightly
> older version of GCC (2.6.3 as opposed to 2.7.2 - related note: does
> anyone have a gcc/g++ 2.7.2 working properly yet or do FreeBSD people
> not care?)
> 
> In summary then, its fast, but resource hungry in the extreme.  I guess
> the default malloc() behaviour is different than in Linux, where a
> malloc() doesn't actually reserve the memory until you actually dirty
> the pages.  I'd say there is probably a memory leak in the system libc
> as well.  One more thing, using tmpfs really eats VM, and I'm not sure
> if it actually returns it to the system on deleting files in there.
> 
Yes, we have /usr/local/bin/gcc -v
Reading specs from
/usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/pentium-unknown-freebsd/2.7.2/specs
gcc version 2.7.2

as well as gcc-2.7.3 ported.

I have on my system 32MB and I run my X server in 24bit mode.
swapinfo reports:

/dev/sd0s1b    126976    27720    99192    22%    Interleaved

I don't need 250MB of swap space and yes I have compile
large packages.

This is everything that I have running on my system:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS  TT  STAT STARTED       TIME COMMAND
root       158  2.8 28.7  5756 8732  ??  S     5:03AM    2:58.34
/usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -bpp 24 (XF86_S3)
hasty     2126  1.3 10.6  6472 3232  p1  S    12:24PM    0:16.22
netscape
root         2  0.0  0.1     0   12  ??  DL   10:00PM    0:03.37
(pagedaemon)
root         3  0.0  0.1     0   12  ??  DL   10:00PM    0:02.02
(vmdaemon)
root         4  0.0  0.1     0   12  ??  DL   10:00PM    0:03.35
(update)
root        25  0.0  0.0   216    0  ??  IWs  10:00PM    0:00.01
adjkerntz -i
root        31  0.0  0.3  1192   72  ??- S     5:00AM    0:04.44
/usr/sbin/snmpd
root        63  0.0  0.4   184  116  ??  Ss    5:00AM    0:00.31 syslogd
daemon      69  0.0  0.0   176    0  ??  IWs   5:00AM    0:00.01 portmap
root        80  0.0  0.0   224    0  ??  IWs   5:00AM    0:00.31 inetd
root        87  0.0  0.5   268  136  ??  Is    5:01AM    0:00.42 cron
root        89  0.0  0.0   200    0  ??  IWs   5:01AM    0:00.04 lpd
root        95  0.0  0.0   416    0  ??  IWs   5:01AM    0:00.11
sendmail: accepting connections (sendmail)
root       136  0.0  0.0   404    0  ??  IWs   5:01AM    0:03.19
/usr/local/sbin/sshd
root       138  0.0  0.3   348   80  ??  Ss    5:01AM    0:06.36
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf

-- nobody     141  0.0  0.0   396    0  ??  IW    5:01AM    0:00.07
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf
nobody     142  0.0  0.0   408    0  ??  IW    5:01AM    0:00.08
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf
nobody     143  0.0  0.0   408    0  ??  IW    5:01AM    0:00.08
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf
nobody     144  0.0  0.0   408    0  ??  IW    5:01AM    0:00.11
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf
hasty      145  0.0  0.0   628    0  v0  IWs   5:01AM    0:00.26 -tcsh
(tcsh)
root       146  0.0  0.0   156    0  v1  IWs+  5:01AM    0:00.02
/usr/libexec/getty Pc ttyv1
root       147  0.0  0.0   156    0  v2  IWs+  5:01AM    0:00.02
/usr/libexec/getty Pc ttyv2
hasty      156  0.0  0.0   468    0  v0  IW+   5:03AM    0:00.04
/bin/csh /usr/local/bin/s24 24
hasty      157  0.0  0.0   192    0  v0  IW+   5:03AM    0:00.07
/usr/X11R6/bin/xinit -- /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -bpp 24
hasty      161  0.0  0.0   460    0  v0  IW    5:03AM    0:00.02 sh
/usr/hasty/.xinitrc
hasty      165  0.0  1.5   512  464  v0  S     5:03AM    0:03.06
fvwm95-2
hasty      166  0.0  0.2   144   52  v0  S     5:03AM    0:00.11
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm95-2/FvwmAuto 9 6 .fvwm2rc95 0 8 300
hasty      169  0.0  0.6   272  180  v0  S     5:03AM    0:00.19
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm95-2//FvwmButtons 10 5 .fvwm2rc95 0 8
hasty      170  0.0  1.3   292  376  v0  S     5:03AM    0:00.69
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm95-2//FvwmTaskBar 12 5 .fvwm2rc95 0 8
hasty      172  0.0  0.9   220  256  v0  S     5:03AM    0:08.43 xclock
-bg #c3c3c3 -geometry -1500-1500 -padding 0 -update 1
hasty      173  0.0  0.0   468    0  v0  IW    5:03AM    0:00.01 /bin/sh
-c nice -16 xload -fg red -nolabel -bg grey60 -update 5 -g
hasty      174  0.0  0.9   276  272  v0  SN    5:03AM    0:02.74 xload
-fg red -nolabel -bg grey60 -update 5 -geometry -1500-1500
hasty      175  0.0  0.8   232  232  v0  S     5:03AM    0:00.40
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm95-2//FvwmPager 14 5 .fvwm2rc95 0 8 0 0
root       177  0.0  0.9   556  280  v0  S     5:03AM    1:09.60
color_xterm -sb -sl 500 -j -ls -fn 7x14 -fb 7x14bold -title Color 
hasty      178  0.0  0.0   644    0  p0  IWs   5:03AM    0:00.13 -tcsh
(tcsh)
root       180  0.0  2.7   560  812  v0  R     5:03AM    1:09.66
color_xterm -sb -sl 500 -j -ls -fn 7x14 -fb 7x14bold -title Color 
hasty      181  0.0  1.4   652  408  p1  Ss    5:03AM    0:00.41 -tcsh
(tcsh)
hasty      183  0.0  0.0   200    0  p0  IW+   5:03AM    0:00.09 rlogin
cioloco
hasty      184  0.0  0.0   200    0  p0  IW+   5:03AM    0:00.09 rlogin
ciolocohasty      209  0.0  5.4  7104 1628  p1  I     5:13AM    1:21.31
/usr/local/bin/wish -f /usr/local/bin/exmh
hasty      229  0.0  2.3  2036  704  p1  I     5:13AM    0:10.90
/usr/local/bin/wish -f /usr/local/bin/exmh-bg exmh /usr/local/lib/
ftp        322  0.0  0.6   308  172  ??  I     5:21AM    0:01.57
-ran.kaist.ac.kr: anonymous/yichoi@ran.kaist.ac.kr: RETR /pub/./li
nobody     551  0.0  0.0   420    0  ??  IW    6:21AM    0:00.10
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf
nobody     843  0.0  0.0   420    0  ??  IW    7:15AM    0:00.10
/usr/local/bin/httpd -f /usr/local/etc/apache/conf/httpd.conf
root      2190  0.0  5.0   556 1528  v0  S    12:33PM    0:01.07
color_xterm -sb -sl 500 -j -ls -fn 7x14 -fb 7x14bold -title Color 
hasty     2191  0.0  2.9   644  876  p2  Is+  12:33PM    0:00.16 -tcsh
(tcsh)
hasty     2194  0.0 16.8  4700 5108  p2  S    12:34PM    0:03.43 emacs
(xemacs-19.13)
root         0  0.0  0.0     0    0  ??  DLs  -          0:00.00
(swapper)
hasty     2264  0.0  0.7   472  220  p1  R+   12:38PM    0:00.01 ps xuaw
root         1  0.0  0.1   364   12  ??  Is   10:00PM    0:00.03
/sbin/init --

	Amancio
---                   
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