On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Alex Tabony wrote:
> If I may jump in on this...
>
> At 02:07 AM 2/20/01 -0500, you wrote:
> >The question is: Do you end up using any swap or not?
> >
> >This gets discussed frequently... at least to the point about how Linux
> >reports low numbers of free memory... but what is reported and what is
> >actual are usually two different things. If you have 2GB of RAM and you
> >don't actually use any swap, then I wouldn't worry. Linux will clean up
> >the allocation tables as needed.
>
> The question comes up, what does one do when swap is starting to be used?
>
> I ask because I am having some odd memory usage problems here. After a
> fresh reboot I am seeing about 44MB of the 256 MB total as used. As times
> goes on, the cached and buffers grow. Now again I would not be worried but
> this is what free is reporting right now:
>
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 257660 253556 4104 33052 81252 149412
> -/+ buffers/cache: 22892 234768
> Swap: 530104 9612 520492
>
> I have been observing the memory usage for the last few weeks, and this
> happens consistently. Over the matter of days, buffers and cache grow to
> fill and exceed the available memory (excepting a tiny amount).
>
> This machine is working as a file/print share and as a mail server with pop
> access for about 20 clients. The process list shows nothing out of the
> ordinary. CPU usage is less than <5%.
>
I have seen the small swap usage on many machines. The code swapped out
is usualy daemons that are sleeping waiting for a connection. I think
what happens is that when you get to the limit of physical memory, Linux
will swap out the sleeping processes. Then when memory usage goes down,
the swapped out codes stays swapped out untill it is called for. that
way, if memory usage goes up again, the memory is still there. This way
the system doesn't swap the same code in and out several times without
running it.
[mikkel@slave mikkel]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 63128 58428 4700 43904 25572 15204
-/+ buffers/cache: 17652 45476
Swap: 62088 3292 58796
[mikkel@firewall mikkel]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 30984 18280 12704 12760 3304 7364
-/+ buffers/cache: 7612 23372
Swap: 33380 2092 31288
[mikkel@gatekeeper mikkel]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 62120 61060 1060 25724 13372 35176
-/+ buffers/cache: 12512 49608
Swap: 32000 968 31032
[mikkel@master mikkel]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 128204 114828 13376 33376 9700 59092
-/+ buffers/cache: 46036 82168
Swap: 72256 3704 68552
Mikkel
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
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