SUMMARY : release swap space after initialisation of apps ?

From: chas (panda@peace.com.my)
Date: Mon Jul 13 1998 - 16:34:37 CDT


Much thanks to Russ Poffenberger for the mighty fast answer
to my question. Conclusion : I don't have enough swap space
(and didn't understand the where swap was being attributed).

Looks like I fall prey to yet another* wonderful
setting in the default config for a Netra. Stopgap : I'll
just install Apache until I reinstall the OS again and
assign the swap space properly.

I still have to say that it looks like my servers use a lot more
memory on Solaris than Digital Unix... or at least reserve more.

Thanks again,

chas

*another is the placement of the Netscape server, logs and web
directory in /usr - which means that sooner or later the log
files blow your / filesystem away if you're not keeping watch.

Answer :
--------
>First off, the line..
>
>swap 3208 224 2984 7% /tmp
>
>has nothing to do with your total swap space. This is virtual filesystem for
>/tmp. By default under Solaris (optional under SunOS), it uses your systems
>virtual memory for /tmp. This improves performance for applications that use
>/tmp. The total space available in /tmp depends on how mich swap (virtual
>memory) is available at any given time.
>
>Second, 100MB total swap just simply isn't enough. I would recommend 300
to 400
>as the absolute minimum for your application.

Original Question :
-------------------
>> I've searched the archives and FAQ but no joy so hope
>> that I am not asking the obvious here :
>>
>> Our Sun Netra with Solaris 2.5.1, all patches, default
>> configuration, 64 MB RAM, is running out of swap space
>> with just 2 Netscape Enterprise server instances running.
>> Now, I know that the NS servers are total memory hogs and
>> I could probably swap them for Apache servers, but I'd
>> like to know if the following is possible :
>>
>> I think that the servers are not releasing the swap space
>> that is used at initialisation time b/c the server is
>> currently under zero load and so there should be no load on
>> any of the webservers.
>> I had the same problem on a digital unix box - by removing a
>> file /sbin/swapdefault, the NS servers would consume 16MB
>> on initialisation but then release it and only consume whatever
>> they needed. With the file /sbin/swapdefault present, they
>> just kept the full 16MB regardless of load.
>> Is there a similar system on Solaris ?
>>
>> This may help :
>> # df -k
>> Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
>> /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 480919 242243 190586 56% /
>> /proc 0 0 0 0% /proc
>> fd 0 0 0 0% /dev/fd
>> /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s6 1408430 773161 494429 61% /export
>> swap 3208 224 2984 7% /tmp
>>
>> # swap -s
>> total: 45720k bytes allocated + 59928k reserved = 105648k used, 5168k
>> available
>>
>> Seems a bit of a contradiction between the two - I fear that
>> I'm really misunderstanding this,



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