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Re: top(1) and the meaning of columns



On 11/2/06, Russell L. Harris <rlharris@oplink.net> wrote:
Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
>> RES (aka RSS) is actually extremely important:  if the sum of all
>> programs' RSS exceeds your RAM size, your system will thrash, and
>> thrashing is not good.
> What does thrashing mean?
An example of thrashing:  You're hauling a ton of live chickens in a van
rated for a half-ton load; so you have to stop every block or so, get
out and bang with a baseball bat on the side of the van, in order to
keep at least half of the chickens airborne.

funny stuff. I once experimented with the system limits: opened dozens
of Gimp instances and it slowed the PC like hell, such that it was
unusable, and then the kernel started murdering those Gimps.



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