In message <20070217035410.GA26483@NetBSD.org>, Darren Reed writes:
>box has 512MB RAM...
>
>load averages:  3.62,  3.58,  2.86                  up 0 days,  7:04   19:53:20
>91 processes:  90 sleeping, 1 on processor
>CPU states:  9.5% user,  0.0% nice, 18.4% system,  0.5% interrupt, 71.6% idle
>Memory: 300M Act, 147M Inact, 1068K Wired, 11M Exec, 399M File, 336K Free
>Swap: 129M Total, 129M Free

Looks normal.

>..swap space never seems to get used.
>From sysctl:
>vm.filemax = 50

$ sysctl -d vm.filemax
vm.filemax: Percentage of physical memory which will be reclaimed from other usage for cached file data

>What's going on here?  I imagine the buffer cache is full of mmap'd
>bis and pieces but why is it so high?

Because there's no other usage.  Since it's within epsilon of completely free
to use data for read cache until another usage comes along, the system does.

-s