* 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes.... @ 2004-11-23 21:36 Nick Warne 2004-11-24 7:08 ` Marcelo Tosatti 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Nick Warne @ 2004-11-23 21:36 UTC (permalink / raw) To: linux-kernel Hi Guys, I updated three boxes today to 2.4.28 (from .27), one at work, and two here at home (Redhat 7.1+, Slackware 10) I am intrigued terribly by the small footprint of memory usage now. I have gone through the changes file, but can really see nothing (to me, a n00b) that would alter that? Can anyone enlighten me? As always, great work too :) Nick -- "When you're chewing on life's gristle, Don't grumble, Give a whistle..." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes.... 2004-11-23 21:36 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes Nick Warne @ 2004-11-24 7:08 ` Marcelo Tosatti 2004-11-24 17:48 ` Hugh Dickins 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Marcelo Tosatti @ 2004-11-24 7:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Nick Warne; +Cc: linux-kernel On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 09:36:36PM +0000, Nick Warne wrote: > Hi Guys, > > I updated three boxes today to 2.4.28 (from .27), one at work, and two here at > home (Redhat 7.1+, Slackware 10) > > I am intrigued terribly by the small footprint of memory usage now. I have > gone through the changes file, but can really see nothing (to me, a n00b) > that would alter that? > > Can anyone enlighten me? What do you mean by "memory usage"? SLAB (/proc/slabinfo) buffers or pagecache ? Whats your workload and what drivers are you using ? Nothing that I am aware of explains this. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes.... 2004-11-24 7:08 ` Marcelo Tosatti @ 2004-11-24 17:48 ` Hugh Dickins 2004-11-24 19:57 ` Nick Warne 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Hugh Dickins @ 2004-11-24 17:48 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Marcelo Tosatti; +Cc: Nick Warne, linux-kernel On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Marcelo Tosatti wrote: > On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 09:36:36PM +0000, Nick Warne wrote: > > > > I updated three boxes today to 2.4.28 (from .27), one at work, and two here at > > home (Redhat 7.1+, Slackware 10) > > > > I am intrigued terribly by the small footprint of memory usage now. I have > > gone through the changes file, but can really see nothing (to me, a n00b) > > that would alter that? > > > > Can anyone enlighten me? > > What do you mean by "memory usage"? SLAB (/proc/slabinfo) buffers > or pagecache ? > > Whats your workload and what drivers are you using ? > > Nothing that I am aware of explains this. _If_ it's a reduction in /proc/slabinfo's dentry_cache, and _if_ these boxes do a lot of removing files from tmpfs, then it would be the "tmpfs: stop negative dentries". Hugh ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes.... 2004-11-24 17:48 ` Hugh Dickins @ 2004-11-24 19:57 ` Nick Warne 2004-11-26 11:53 ` Nix 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Nick Warne @ 2004-11-24 19:57 UTC (permalink / raw) To: linux-kernel On Wednesday 24 November 2004 17:48, Hugh Dickins wrote: > On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Marcelo Tosatti wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 09:36:36PM +0000, Nick Warne wrote: > > > I updated three boxes today to 2.4.28 (from .27), one at work, and two > > > here at home (Redhat 7.1+, Slackware 10) > > > > > > I am intrigued terribly by the small footprint of memory usage now. I > > > have gone through the changes file, but can really see nothing (to me, > > > a n00b) that would alter that? > > > > > > Can anyone enlighten me? > > > > What do you mean by "memory usage"? SLAB (/proc/slabinfo) buffers > > or pagecache ? > > > > Whats your workload and what drivers are you using ? > > > > Nothing that I am aware of explains this. > > _If_ it's a reduction in /proc/slabinfo's dentry_cache, and > _if_ these boxes do a lot of removing files from tmpfs, > then it would be the "tmpfs: stop negative dentries". I dunno, no real scientific measures at all, but I have noticed using 'free' all boxes from boot load load like 40% less in memory. As time goes on, memory usage grows (of course), but now it 'drops off' when not being used... 2.4.2x never done that. I tested today on my Slackware box especially: Linux linuxamd 2.4.28 #1 Tue Nov 23 17:46:52 GMT 2004 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux (HM, append="1280M"). An Athlon 1.2Ghz running all up to date Slack 10 stable with KDE 3.3.0 upgrade. I ran Celestia for over an hour, burnt a few knoppix ISO's, and then ISO'ed a big directory to burn all using 'BashBurn'. Just played Quake2 for three maps running full chat. Normally memory slowly fills up, perhaps using swap for a bit under these circumstances - but looking afterwards: root@linuxamd:~# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1292348 520012 772336 0 38596 327304 -/+ buffers/cache: 154112 1138236 Swap: 1959888 0 1959888 I would normally expect 'free' to report 900000 odd (with Celestia pushing toward swap) by now... but it doesn't. Another box,: Linux quake.ddayuk.dyndns.org 2.4.28 #1 Tue Nov 23 17:28:32 GMT 2004 i686 unknown Runs a Quake2 server and Teamspeak. Again, usually after 2 hours uptime nearly hits peak, but now: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 516440 45368 471072 0 6296 25556 -/+ buffers/cache: 13516 502924 Swap: 265032 0 265032 The box at work is a back-up httpd (apache) web server running NTPD for whole sub-net, mrtg, and a lot of other stuff (I use for testing stuff until I push to main web server)... this always has 30/40MB disk swap. Today only 6MB. I build all kernels with no modules, all built in (expect USB for memory sticks on slack). The only change I done this time from previous kernel upgrades was download the full 2.4.28 bz2 file rather than apply patches to existing build trees (make oldconfig). But whatever, I am impressed indeed - somethings changed for the good!!! Nick -- "When you're chewing on life's gristle, Don't grumble, Give a whistle..." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes.... 2004-11-24 19:57 ` Nick Warne @ 2004-11-26 11:53 ` Nix 2004-11-27 15:42 ` Nick Warne 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Nix @ 2004-11-26 11:53 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Nick Warne; +Cc: linux-kernel On 24 Nov 2004, Nick Warne mused: > Normally memory slowly fills up, perhaps using swap for a bit under these > circumstances - but looking afterwards: This is a feature, not a bug. Free memory is wasted memory (although some has to be kept free for drivers that need GFP_ATOMIC allocations: i.e. `memory *now* dammit *now*'. > root@linuxamd:~# free > total used free shared buffers cached > Mem: 1292348 520012 772336 0 38596 327304 > -/+ buffers/cache: 154112 1138236 > Swap: 1959888 0 1959888 The only thing I can think of that causes this is something very memory-hungry that's just been killed, releasing a pile of pages back to the system. > But whatever, I am impressed indeed - somethings changed for the good!!! I see no signs of such a change on my 2.4.28 boxes: (UltraSPARC II) total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 509360 498432 10928 0 133568 52656 -/+ buffers/cache: 312208 197152 Swap: 1557264 143992 1413272 (Athlon IV) total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 775072 762744 12328 0 88304 322740 -/+ buffers/cache: 351700 423372 Swap: 1048560 81020 967540 (i586) total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 126992 123640 3352 0 11792 42012 -/+ buffers/cache: 69836 57156 Swap: 1245168 155560 1089608 The only suspiciously high free figure is on a 2.4.28 UML instance (2.4.28 + forward-ported 2.4.27-1 patches) on one of those machines: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 94000 66512 27488 0 2940 31260 -/+ buffers/cache: 32312 61688 Swap: 0 0 0 and that is trivially obviously caused by the instance's lack of swap :) -- `The sword we forged has turned upon us Only now, at the end of all things do we see The lamp-bearer dies; only the lamp burns on.' ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes.... 2004-11-26 11:53 ` Nix @ 2004-11-27 15:42 ` Nick Warne 0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Nick Warne @ 2004-11-27 15:42 UTC (permalink / raw) To: linux-kernel On Friday 26 November 2004 11:53, Nix wrote: > On 24 Nov 2004, Nick Warne mused: > > Normally memory slowly fills up, perhaps using swap for a bit under these > > circumstances - but looking afterwards: > > This is a feature, not a bug. Free memory is wasted memory (although > some has to be kept free for drivers that need GFP_ATOMIC allocations: > i.e. `memory *now* dammit *now*'. > > > root@linuxamd:~# free > > total used free shared buffers cached > > Mem: 1292348 520012 772336 0 38596 327304 > > -/+ buffers/cache: 154112 1138236 > > Swap: 1959888 0 1959888 > > The only thing I can think of that causes this is something very > memory-hungry that's just been killed, releasing a pile of pages back to > the system. > > > But whatever, I am impressed indeed - somethings changed for the good!!! > > I see no signs of such a change on my 2.4.28 boxes: ~snip~ Ummm. I do, though. Maybe the cause is I am getting more experienced, and building kernels now, I _do_ the right things. But for some reason I do find 2.4.28 a lot more responsive to memory usage - I really do. Nick -- "When you're chewing on life's gristle, Don't grumble, Give a whistle..." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-11-27 15:43 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2004-11-23 21:36 2.4.28 -> ch..ch...changes Nick Warne 2004-11-24 7:08 ` Marcelo Tosatti 2004-11-24 17:48 ` Hugh Dickins 2004-11-24 19:57 ` Nick Warne 2004-11-26 11:53 ` Nix 2004-11-27 15:42 ` Nick Warne
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