Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request
From: utacfd!utafll!bruce@central.sun.com (Bruce Samuelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: increasing RAM memory available to a large process
Keywords: SunOS
Message-ID: <628@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 89 19:06:37 GMT
Sender: root@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 19
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 89, message 12 of 14

I would like to make more RAM memory available to a memory-intensive
process than Unix is willing to dole out, in order to reduce its virtual
memory paging.  Can this be done, possibly by reconfiguring the kernel?

The process I'm running is Smalltalk.  The most Unix ever gives it is only
40%-50% of the total available memory, even if there is nothing else going
on except mostly idle background daemons.  Shouldn't it be possible to
give it 80% or 90%?  The Sun engineer we talked to did not offer a
technique for doing this.  He did suggest that we buy more memory, but we
don't currently have the money.

Equipment			: 4  MB 3/50s running SunOS 3.2
Total available memory		: 3.3MB (4MB - size of kernel and disk buffs)
Max mem avail for large process : 1.6MB
Size of large process		: 4-5MB typically


Bruce Samuelson			Dept. of Foreign Languages & Linguistics
...uunet!texbell!utafll!bruce	Univ. of Texas, Arlington