On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Jon Ribbens wrote:

> Alfred Perlstein <bright@rush.net> wrote:
> > You're browsing with netscape and It hits about 32megs in size,
> > you click on a multimedia object and netscape execs a helper app.
> 
> vfork()
> 
> > you also have to consider a program wishing to make sparse use
> > of its address space, without overcommit it becomes impossible.
> 
> So Don't Do That Then.

Overcommit can be used for many reasons. I use it to reserve a large
linear address space to mmap alpha i/o spaces to which allows an efficient
implementation of inx/outx in user mode:

  UID   PID  PPID CPU PRI NI   VSZ  RSS WCHAN  STAT  TT       TIME COMMAND
    0 43655 43652   7   2  0 12616584 12456 select S     ??  1036:41.62 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -auth /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/authdir/A:0-w43652

The X server is using 12G of address space..

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037