At the end of this message is a random sample of my 'ps -aux'
output.    What concerns me is the relation of the VSZ field to the
RSS field.  The swap partition that the smaller mfs is attached to is
approximately 20 meg in size.  This leads me to believe that the VSZ
field is in K.

	However, looking at emacs or XSun entries, even though the
process sizes are 7 and 9 meg respectively (about what I'd expect on a
sparc), the RSS field is always around 220-350.  Never any bigger.

	Normally, an active process having less than 10% of it's pages
in core would be a very bad performance problem... but, in general,
the emacs and XSun (both being used in this example) are very
responsive.

	In addition... swap is being used quite a bit even though
there the sum of the RSS field is 5464.  Do these fields differ in
units (K vs pages), or is it just wrong.  The man page doesn't seem to
make it clear --- besices saying that vsz is in K (which is obvious).

	FYI, this is a Sun4/260 w/ 24 megs of memory in it.

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TT  STAT STARTED       TIME COMMAND
dgilbert  7851 50.1  1.4   336  312 p1  R+   11:42PM    0:02.68 /usr/libexec//c
dgilbert  7852 33.6  0.8   352  184 p2  R    11:42PM    0:01.93 ps -aux 
news      7842 14.1  0.8   472  192 ??  RN   11:42PM    0:04.24 gunzip 
dgilbert  7850  4.9  0.7   112  168 p1  S+   11:42PM    0:00.36 cc -O2 -Werror 
dgilbert   261  5.9  1.1  7544  248 p2  S     8:18PM   40:09.10 emacs 
dgilbert  7849  1.9  0.7   424  152 p1  S+   11:42PM    0:00.15 /bin/sh -ec cc 
dgilbert  7255  1.5  1.1  2064  248 p1  S+   11:25PM    0:18.78 make 
dgilbert   214  2.5  1.0  9352  224 co  S     8:16PM    9:27.78 Xsun 
root        83  0.0  0.0   232   88 ??  IWs   8:14PM    0:15.12 cron 
root        87  0.0  0.5   248  112 ??  Ss    8:14PM    0:09.69 routed -q 
root        94  0.0  0.0    96   40 ??  IWs   8:14PM    0:00.23 lpd 
root        97  0.0  0.0   464    0 ??  IWs   8:14PM    0:03.15 sendmail: accep
root       100  0.0  0.0   160   72 ??  IWs   8:14PM    0:02.85 inetd 
uucp       128  0.0  0.0   544   56 ??  IWs   8:15PM    0:03.73 /usr/local/sbin
dgilbert   142  0.0  0.0   792    0 co  IWs   8:15PM    0:05.96 -bash (bash)
uucp       143  0.0  0.0   664  128 ??  IW    8:15PM    0:31.11 /usr/local/libe
root       144  0.0  0.0   792  200  b  IWs+  8:15PM    0:13.87 -bash (bash)
dgilbert   212  0.0  0.0   104   56 co  IW+   8:16PM    0:02.17 xinit 
dgilbert   213  0.0  0.0   408  144 co  IW    8:16PM    0:00.42 sh /u/dgilbert/
dgilbert   216  0.0  0.0   408  144 co  IW    8:16PM    0:00.80 sh /u/dgilbert/
dgilbert   219  0.0  0.0   328  264 co  IW    8:16PM    0:30.34 fvwm 
dgilbert   223  0.0  0.0   184  160 co  IW    8:16PM    0:04.30 /usr/lib/X11/fv
root       225  0.0  0.0   376  176 co  IW    8:16PM    0:08.87 xterm 
root       227  0.0  0.6   632  144 co  S     8:16PM    0:17.73 xterm 
root       229  0.0  0.0   632  184 co  IW    8:16PM    0:13.91 xterm 
root       231  0.0  0.0   632   88 co  IW    8:16PM    0:39.64 xterm 
root         0  0.0  0.0     0    0 ??  DLs   8:13PM    0:05.99 (swapper)
dgilbert   233  0.0  0.6   168  136 co  S     8:16PM    0:04.93 xclock 
dgilbert   234  0.0  0.0   152  152 co  IW    8:16PM    0:07.11 /usr/lib/X11/fv
dgilbert   236  0.0  0.0   800   56 p1  IWs   8:16PM    0:08.43 bash 
dgilbert   237  0.0  0.0   800  216 p0  IWs+  8:16PM    0:08.83 bash 
dgilbert   238  0.0  0.0   800  208 p2  IWs+  8:16PM    0:08.26 bash 
dgilbert   244  0.0  0.0   800    0 p3  IWs+  8:16PM    0:05.38 bash 
root       484  0.0  0.0   232   56 ??  IW    8:30PM    0:00.15 CRON (cron)
news       486  0.0  0.0   416  144 ??  IWs   8:30PM    0:00.39 /bin/sh -c nice
news       489  0.6  0.7   472  152 ??  IN    8:30PM    2:09.61 /bin/sh /usr/lo
root      2487  0.0  0.6   248  144 ??  S     9:17PM    0:21.23 /sbin/ping -i 3
dgilbert   232  0.0  0.0   416  144 co  IW    8:16PM    0:00.17 /bin/sh -c xclo
root         1  0.0  0.0   312   80 ??  IWs   8:13PM    0:03.80 /sbin/init 
root         2  0.0  0.0     0    0 ??  DL    8:13PM    1:28.42 (pagedaemon)
root        25  0.1  0.1 20736    8 ??  Ss    8:14PM    0:18.73 mfs /dev/sd1b /
root        27  0.2  0.1 41216    8 ??  Ss    8:14PM    0:35.13 mfs /dev/sd3b /
root        58  0.0  0.0    88   40 ??  IWs   8:14PM    0:00.31 portmap 
root        66  0.0  0.4    80   80 ??  Ss    8:14PM    0:17.44 syslogd 
root        81  0.8  0.3    24   56 ??  Ss    8:14PM    2:17.59 update 

Dave.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|David Gilbert, PCI, Richmond Hill, Ontario.  | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:      dgilbert@jaywon.pci.on.ca         |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.pci.on.ca/~dgilbert               |   are precisely opposite.  |
---------------------------------------------------------GLO----------------