Memory Question

[Colin J. Raven]

The essence of the original question was:

>> Is there something I can do in order to "optimize" -
>> which in this case
>> paradoxically would seem to mean "reduce" the amount
>> of free memory?

On Jan 13 at 15:12, Bryan Fullerton suggested:
>
> Run more processes that do interesting things. Your top output looks
> fairly normal for a machine that's freshly rebooted and/or not
> terribly busy.
>

On Jan 13 at 12:28, Gregor Mosheh also said in a similar vein:
>
> The simple answer is: "Use it!" Exactly how depends on
> what you're running. Basically, check the docs for all
> the stuff your server is running and see what you can
> do to throw more memory at it. A lot of software has
> docs about performance tuning, and its memory usage
> (and performance) can usually be cranked up.
>
> If you're using a database server, check the DB's
> config file (postgresql.conf or my.cnf) and allocate a
> bunch of memory to buffers. If you're running Apache,
> you can increase the spare servers; if your Apache
> runs Perl CGI programs, you could consider using
> mod_perl.

OK, this makes sense! All the while I was attempting to be as 
"economical" as seemed possible under the circumstances...or as 
economical as various config settings seemed to allow. I guess this goes 
back to the era I only recently emerged from, where any machine I owned 
had considerably less resources to spare. Or more accurately, *no* 
resources to spare. Odd feeling knowing there's a ton of horsepower 
available that's not (yet) being utilized.

Gentlemen, thank you for the feedback and guidance. My appreciation for 
this OS and this group grows exponentially - daily.

Boris and fellow trolls, please take note.


Regards,
-Colin
--
Colin J. Raven
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE - http://www.FreeBSD.org - There can be only One
Thu Jan 13 21:41:00 CET 2005
9:41PM  up 1 day, 10:29, 6 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

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