We covered a similar issue with sort_area_size in Tim Gorman's seminar at IOUG in April.
Unless brk() is called, the memory is not returned to the OS. Jared Kirtikumar Deshpande <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/03/2003 12:29 PM Please respond to ORACLE-L To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc: Subject: Re: 9i - Dynamic SGA - SGA_MAX_SIZE Thanks, Mladen. That makes sense. One just needs to make sure (by testing) that the OS supports this feature. - Kirti --- Mladen Gogala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Kirti, problem is in the malloc mechanism. The subroutine to free the memory > doesn't return it to the OS, it returns it to the "allocation pool instead. > As a consequence, when oracle does "free", its address space is not going to > go down. You realize, of course, that malloc, calloc, realloc and free are the > only options, because of their portability. There are low level allocation > routines like brk() to increase the address space, but unaware of any routine > to decrease the address space. Here is the manual page for the library > subroutine called "mallopt", which is mostly obsolete but still exists on > HP-UX. The mechanism remained the same, but the control was taken away from > the users. Manual page does illustrate the mechanism, though. > malloc(3C) malloc(3C) > <snip> __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Kirtikumar Deshpande INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).