This problem will happen and there will still be 1GB of free RAM and it hasn't touched the swap at all. We are running FreeBSD 4.10 on this box.
the kernel limits the amount of ram a process can bind by default. try the following put this in /boot/loader.conf kern.maxdsiz="1610612736" kern.dfldsiz="1610612736" kerm.maxssiz="1610612736" put the following into your kernel conf file, rebuild your kernel and reboot: options MAXDSIZ="(768*1024*1024)" options MAXSSIZ="(256*1024*1024)" options DFLDSIZ="(768*1024*1024)" the values are examples only, you will need to play with them to find the right ones. keep in mind that the wrong ones, e if you put them too close to the amount of physical ram in the box could cause the box not to boot. hth