Very Computer

Should I enable priority paging on my Sun E250 running Solaris 7?  The
system has high RAM usage but low CPU usage (most of the processes are
sleeping -- sorta like my cat, they take space but do little).

I've read the docs from Sun about priority paging, but they do not offer any
'real world' comparisons.  It seems that Sun is going to make this a default
kernel option in the future.

Any insight are much appreciated.

You DO want to use priority paging with Solaris 7.
See http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/performance/priority_paging.html for more
info.
With Solaris 8, things have been changed and you should not try to set priority
paging.

--
Raymond Scott

indeed priopag is embedded within the sol8 implementation.
in case of stability issues , just enable it.

andre'

Not quite - the algorithm has changed in SunOS 5.8, it's no longer
conventional or priority paging.  Refer to
http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/show.pl?target=content/content8 .  The
SunOS 5.8 memory architecture is better because the buffer cache for
filesystem pages is now maintained independently of the cache for other
types of pages.  High filesystem activity alone is no longer sufficient
to cause the entire system to thrash.

Quote:> in case of stability issues , just enable it.

On SunOS 5.7 or patched 5.6 or 5.5.1.  Don't enable it on 5.8.

Mark