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
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