> This may just be a typo, but if you really did create write (dirty)
> block device cache by writing the pg_dump file somewhere, then that
> is what it's supposed to do ;)
The pgdump was across the network. So the only caching on the machine was read caching.
> Read cache of course does not need to be flushed and can simply be
> dumped when the memory is needed, and so Linux will keep more or
> less unlimited amounts of read cache until it needs the memory for
> something else ....
Right, that's the normal behavior. Except not on this machine.
--Josh