Thanks for the helpful replies. This must be approaching an FAQ, it seems...!
I got (several) copies of a previous extensive summary which I will forward
to anyone interested. Some additional info which popped up may be of
interest...
1. The APARENT lack of memory is due to the use of "memory not otherwise
required" for holding cached disk blocks.
2. The "real" paging load is seen in the "po" col of vmstat output.
Use vmstat -S option to see swapping activity.
See also pstat -T for info on use of swap space.
3. There's some info on disk caching in the undocumented "vmstat -b" output.
(But not much use without the doc.!)
4. There's a utility called vmpage (see archie for availability) which tells
exactly where memory is used in VM systems (ie 4.1 onwards)
5. You can consume significant ammounts of memory by accessing shared
libraries - Is this the "locked" entry in "top" output, I wonder?
6. I've related the very high level of system interrupts shown in my vmstat
output to a miscreant daemon which sometimes loops on a kernel call.
Thanks to...
Craig Bishop <csb@gdwb.vic.gov.au>
Piete.Brooks@cl.cam.ac.uk
kevin%kalli%ups@fourx.Aus.Sun.COM
nims@Andersen.COM (Christopher D. Nims)
don@mars.dgrc.doc.ca (Donald McLachlan)
stern@sunne.East.Sun.COM (Hal Stern - NE Area Systems Engineer)
Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com>
hyder@niwot.scd.ucar.EDU (Paul Hyder)
ia@st-andrews.ac.uk (Ian Angles)
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