thanks Scott. what i am thinking is the memory config sent me so deep into the config that it is not a bad thing for my learning.
i split the server 24 ways, then manually edited these lines in the config to set the VE limits at 256MB:
VMGUARPAGES="65536:2147483647"
OOMGUARPAGES="65536:2147483647"
PRIVVMPAGES="65536:75536"
SHMPAGES="6553:6553"
mainly all guess work from studying the patterns in the numbers
this is the whole config when done for 256MB
# Primary parameters
NUMPROC="333:333"
AVNUMPROC="93:93"
NUMTCPSOCK="333:333"
NUMOTHERSOCK="333:333"
VMGUARPAGES="65536:2147483647"
# Secondary parameters
KMEMSIZE="7628151:8390966"
TCPSNDBUF="1178749:2542717"
TCPRCVBUF="1178749:2542717"
OTHERSOCKBUF="589374:1953342"
DGRAMRCVBUF="589374:589374"
OOMGUARPAGES="65536:2147483647"
PRIVVMPAGES="65536:75536"
# Auxiliary parameters
LOCKEDPAGES="372:372"
SHMPAGES="6553:6553"
PHYSPAGES="0:2147483647"
NUMFILE="2976:2976"
NUMFLOCK="297:326"
NUMPTY="33:33"
NUMSIGINFO="1024:1024"
DCACHESIZE="1664248:1714176"
NUMIPTENT="83:83"
DISKSPACE="6291456:6291456"
DISKINODES="157911:173703"
CPUUNITS="7173"
vzcfgvalidate validates the config ok