Tim Post <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm not discounting the RES/SHR columns because they are indeed > interesting, but not entirely useful and as someone pointed out .. a bit > cryptic.
RES (aka RSS) is actually extremely important: if the sum of all programs' RSS exceeds your RAM size, your system will thrash, and thrashing is not good. By contrast, as long as you have swap space available it's generally not a problem (and in fact rather common) for the sum of all VIRT (- SHARE) to exceed RAM size. Once the sum of all VIRT - SHARE (more or less) exceeds RAM + swap size, of course, then the kernel starts to kill programs. Usually this happens only after your system began to thrash a long time ago, so in many cases you have a chance to manually kill something before you reach that point. [Strictly speaking, RSS is only an estimate of a somewhat nebulous concept, but that's the general idea.] -Miles -- The car has become... an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete. [Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]