minfree

Description

Minimum acceptable memory level. When memory drops below this number, the system biases allocations toward those necessary to successfully complete pageout operations or to swap processes completely out of memory, and either denies or blocks other allocation requests.

Data Type

Unsigned integer

Default

desfree / 2

Range

The minimum value is 128 kbytes or 1/256th of physical memory, whichever is greater, expressed as pages using the page size returned by getpagesize(3C).

The maximum is the number of physical memory pages. The maximum value should be no more than 7.5% of physical memory. The system does no enforcement of this range other than that described in the Validation section.

Units

Pages

Dynamic?

Yes, unless dynamic reconfiguration operations that add or delete memory occur. At that point, the value is reset to whatever was provided in the /etc/system file or was calculated from the new physical memory value.

Validation

If minfree is greater than desfree, minfree is set to desfree / 2. No message is displayed.

Implicit

The relationship of cachefree is greater than or equal to lotsfree, which is greater than desfree, which is greater than minfree should be maintained at all times.

When to Change

The default value is generally adequate. For systems with relatively static workloads and large amounts of memory, adjust this value downwards. The minimum acceptable value is 128 Kbytes expressed as pages using the page size returned by getpagesize(3C).

Commitment Level

Unstable