Subject: Re: Snapshot Report - July 24th tar_files
To: Alistair G. Crooks <agc@uts.amdahl.com>
From: Chris G. Demetriou <cgd@alpha.bostic.com>
List: current-users
Date: 07/26/1994 15:04:27
> 5.  Could people please read the back copies of the mailing lists
> before they start porting software, please, to avoid duplicating
> effort?  (I'm using tholo's patches with top-3.3beta3, and they're
> working very well, although I was surprised to find I had 329
> Megabytes of Virtual memory, when I thought I only had 40-ish Meg
> :-)).

Actually, non-intuitive as it may seem, this number is actually, by
the literal wording of the description of the data, correct.

Note that the description is "active virtual memory", not
"physical memory used for active virtual memory".  Basically
what that means is that it's the sum of the sizes of the
memory objects that have been used in the last N seconds,
multiplied by the number of times that object is mapped in
different processes.

Actually, it's not 100% correct; it's still a little on the high
side, but not nearly so much as you'd guess.

In any event, it's definitely non-intuitive, and not too useful,
either, and eventually i'd like to get around to "fixing" it, but
"not today."

This is a case where broken, but sensible, software is better
than working software.  8-)



chris

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