[SunHELP] memory leak under Solaris 7

[Kurt Mosiejczuk]

Because it is using the memory as disk buffer.  Imagine a normal
shell session where you keep using vi.  After the first time,
Solaris has vi buffered.  No loading from disk.  If it,  as you
seem to want it to, released the memory immediately, next time
you types 'vi' it would have to re-load from disk.  Bingo, slower
system.

However, Solaris is pretty smart.  If you aren't running vi and
you need the physical memory, it releases that buffer.  It just
won't do it before there is a need.

Unused memory is wasted memory.  And solaris is a big believer in
that. It will use everything it can to make the system faster.

Hope this helps to explain.

--Kurt

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002 bigj at flatwan.net wrote:

> Thanks for the reply Dale. I guess my only question now is why the system
> doesn't return the memory to other processes once it's done. What's
> happening  now is it just keeps removing ram until there is none left.

> Jon