doc: clarify what --alloc-size does

[fio.git] / HOWTO

diff --git a/HOWTO b/HOWTO
index 6b449e97029b674525983ac158e5b40881f1b733..4fef1504a410a205c95c7c85b489f0068bceb1a5 100644 (file)
--- a/HOWTO
+++ b/HOWTO
@@ -222,8 +222,8 @@ Command line options
 
 .. option:: --alloc-size=kb
 
-       Set the internal smalloc pool size to `kb` in KiB.  The
-       ``--alloc-size`` switch allows one to use a larger pool size for smalloc.
+       Allocate additional internal smalloc pools of size `kb` in KiB.  The
+       ``--alloc-size`` option increases shared memory set aside for use by fio.
        If running large jobs with randommap enabled, fio can run out of memory.
        Smalloc is an internal allocator for shared structures from a fixed size
        memory pool and can grow to 16 pools. The pool size defaults to 16MiB.