Re: Swapping on Solaris

Kevin Schroeder wrote:

> I suspect that the memory is being used to cache files as well since
> the email boxes are using unix mailboxes, for the time being. With
> people checking their email sometimes once per minute I can see why
> Solaris would want to cache those files. Perhaps my question would be
> more appropriate to a Solaris mailing list since what I really want to
> do is get Solaris to simply allow PostgreSQL to use more RAM and
> reduce the amount of RAM used for file caching. I would have thought
> that Solaris gives some deference to a running application that's
> being swapped than for a file cache.
>
> Is there any way to set custom parameters on Solaris' file-caching
> behavior to allow PostgreSQL to use more physical RAM?

Your explanation doesn't sound quite correct. If postgresql malloc()'s
some memory and uses it, the file cache will be reduced in size and the
memory given to postgresql. But if postgresql doesn't ask for or use
the memory, then solaris is going to use it for something else. There's
nothing in Solaris that doesn't "allow" postgresql to use more RAM.

-- Alan