From: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
To: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Cc: Frank Dekervel <Frank.dekervel@student.kuleuven.ac.Be>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>,
Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo@conectiva.com.br>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: need help interpreting 'free' output.
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 17:51:30 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20011030175129.J1340@athlon.random> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <200110301132.MAA22471@lambik.cc.kuleuven.ac.be> <Pine.LNX.4.21.0110301557560.1229-100000@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0110301557560.1229-100000@localhost.localdomain>; from hugh@veritas.com on Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 04:07:45PM +0000
On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 04:07:45PM +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Frank Dekervel wrote:
> >
> > since i saw strange things happening with my free memory numbers, i tried
> > this:
> > - i compiled and booted a fresh kernel (no proprietary modules, no patches,
> > just 2.4.14-pre4)
> > - i did free.
> >
> > bakvis:~# free
> > total used free shared buffers cached
> > Mem: 384912 55644 329268 0 3652 29880
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 22112 362800
> > Swap: 136512 0 136512
> >
> > so i have 22 meg used right ?
> >
> > - i started the daily cron jobs (updatedb and htdig and some minor things
> > like log rotation)
> >
> > - i did 'free' again.
> >
> > bakvis:~# free
> > total used free shared buffers cached
> > Mem: 384912 377060 7852 0 29424 125660
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 221976 162936
> > Swap: 136512 752 135760
> >
> > so now there is 220 meg used memory right ?
> > and the memory is definitely used, because as soon as i start a memory hog
> > the system hits swap ...
> >
> > so what am i missing here ?
> > should i provide more info about my kernel configuration ? vmstat numbers ?
>
> I'm fairly sure /proc/slabinfo will show large inode_cache and large
> dentry_cache: which is natural after updatedb, nothing wrong with that.
>
> However, unlike 2.4.13, 2.4.14-pre (you tried pre4, I just tried pre5)
> seems much too unwilling to shrink_dcache and shrink_icache: your
> memory hog should shrink them, but it seems not to. Linus?
2.4.14pre5aa1 has a logic to try to shrink those caches at a better
time. Frank could you try again with pre5aa1 and see if it goes better?
Not shrinking the vfs caches when shrink_cache failed is wrong,
allocations from ZONE_NORMAL will fail without way to recover as soon as
all ZONE_NORMAL is eat in vfs caches.
Andrea
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2001-10-30 16:53 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2001-10-30 11:32 need help interpreting 'free' output Frank Dekervel
2001-10-30 11:46 ` Mike Fedyk
2001-10-30 14:02 ` Frank Dekervel
2001-10-30 16:07 ` Hugh Dickins
2001-10-30 16:51 ` Andrea Arcangeli [this message]
2001-10-30 16:52 ` Linus Torvalds
2001-10-30 17:06 ` Andrea Arcangeli
2001-10-30 17:28 ` Linus Torvalds
2001-10-30 17:39 ` Andrea Arcangeli
2001-10-30 17:53 ` Linus Torvalds
2001-10-30 18:16 ` Andrea Arcangeli
2001-10-30 18:28 ` Linus Torvalds
2001-10-30 18:58 ` Andrea Arcangeli
2001-10-30 19:21 ` Linus Torvalds
2001-10-30 20:05 ` Andrea Arcangeli
2001-10-30 20:25 ` Linus Torvalds
2001-10-30 18:05 ` Eric W. Biederman
2001-10-30 20:47 ` David S. Miller
2001-10-30 18:11 ` Frank Dekervel
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20011030175129.J1340@athlon.random \
--to=andrea@suse.de \
--cc=Frank.dekervel@student.kuleuven.ac.Be \
--cc=hugh@veritas.com \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=marcelo@conectiva.com.br \
--cc=torvalds@transmeta.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.