*BSD News Article 89253


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From: Dave DeLaune <javaman@halcyon.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: 2.2 GAMMA 2/5 results in SWAP FULL?
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 10:15:45 -0800
Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc.
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Thomas Evans wrote:
> 
> > After switching from Linux to FreeBSD :) I was surprised at the
> > differences in swap sizes as well.  However I have found that
> > FreeBSD when given a lot of swap space to work with is more responsive
> > than Linux under the same conditions.  Some unices require more swap and
> > manage it better. The AIX CAD box I use at work has 128 Megs of ram and
> > 256 Megs of swap.
> Well using "ps -aux", vmstat, pstat -s, this is the current picture, my
> math tells me that there is either a memory leak or the kernel is not
> freeing up SWAP space. A 32 Meg machine with 17.5 Meg of swap space in
> use...thats 50Meg, ok , where is it?

<stuff deleted>

I am no expert on memory management and such, so I cannot technically
respond to your question.  Did you exit X and do the same commands to
see if the swap was reduced? When I do it does.  

This sounds a lot like the question people
threw at the linux developers when the 'free' command never showed 
memory returning to the free pool after it had been once committed.  
It was instead being kept in the buffers. 


----------------------------------
David DeLaune
javaman@halcyon.com
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