Good points, and questions...
At this time, I've basically boiled down my attitude that disk caches 
are good, but I never want them to interfere with other types of memory 
needs, so I basically holds the disk cache allowance very low.
If there is memory to use, the disk cache will grab it anyway, so it's a 
good deal in my eyes.

Others, I'm sure, have other opinions on this, and I'll let them speak 
for themself.

My /etc/sysctl.conf looks like this, anyway...

----
# Tune the vm.
vm.filemin=5
vm.filemax=10
vm.anonmin=5
vm.anonmax=80
vm.execmin=5
vm.execmax=50
vm.bufcache=5
----

While I probably could work some more on these values, this is what I 
put together in a minute or five, and it gives me much better 
performance than before. So good, in fact, that I don't feel the need to 
tweak the memory system any more.

	Johnny

Przemysław Pawełczyk wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:10:48 +0200
> Johnny Billquist <bqt@update.uu.se> wrote:
> 
>> I find it just silly to say that my problem is that I have too little 
>> ram, when obviously the system was very zappy before the new vm system 
>> came into place, and the system was very zappy once again, once I 
>> changed the vm tuning parameters.
> 
> Hi,
> I think this thread leads us to nowhere, albeit it gave some interesting suggestions.
> 
> I read the VM_tune Primer proposed by Andres Maus (thank you very mutch), I've read your solutions although they were not directly aiming to improve my system, and all the remarks. But wouldn't it be to inconvenient to you to summerize the discussion for users less aquainted with system intrinsics?
> 
> 1) commands, what to trace and why (some answers one can find within the posts)
> 2) config entries for
> a) server (if you need that)
> b) workstation (I'd appreciated it the most)
> b.1) with a few bigger apps like mail, web browser, editor (example)
> b.2) with a few smaller apps like mail, web browser, editor or many scripts and CLI apps (example)
> b.3) with a few apps like like mail, web browser, streaming (coding/decoding) 
> 
> IMHO NetBSD is decidedly preset to PCs following mainstream tech rules of proper dis'o'dat. If I had newer machine fitted with enough memory I wouldn't even notice vm complex settings. But I'm noughty boy and I _do not_ always follow the good advice of elders. ;-) Or cannot.
> 
> Your suggestions would tip me more effectivly when presented in orderly manner. You know too well tweaking the memory is a very complex task and some help would be priceless.
> 
> Perhaps one of you would like to write them to NetBSD Wiki?
> 
> Cheers,
> warpman