On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 14:45, Ron Peterson wrote: > On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, David F. Skoll wrote: > > On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Ron Peterson wrote: > > > > > This system has 6GB RAM. On boot, after everything gets going, the system > > > consumes just under 1GB. Over time, this useage is slowly creeping > > > up. > > > > Which process is growing? (Use "ps" to find the process with the large > > VSZ entry.) > > No single process is getting too large. Sorting 'top' by memory useage > shows the mimedefang processes at the top, all using the expected 20-30MB. > > > When you say the usage is creeping up, how do you know? Linux, by default, > > will use up all free memory for buffer cache purposes. It is normal > > for a Linux system to show practically 100% memory usage after it has been > > running for a while. > > > > MIMEDefang is supposed to be highly resistant to memory leaks, but it's not > > impossible that there are some. > > What we have been seeing is that the system's memory useage slowly (over a > day or two) creeps up to full utilization. Then the swap space starts > being used. I don't know how hard it's getting hit, just that it goes > from 0% to something slightly more than 0%. > > That would all be o.k., but for the fact that the load average also > spikes. We're running a load average just over 1% right now. The CPUs > are over 80% idle. Everything is going full bore. By tomorrow morning, I > expect the load average to be over 50, and the CPU idle to be way > down. This machine is also serving IMP, and those users start dropping > off and complaining. That function has existed for quite some time now > without any problems.
Ok this sounds more like a problem with items going into Device Wait... and hitting the load average up. The usual way I used to debug these problems (when I did support for RH) would be to get a listing of everything in the machine, and what services you are running. CPU: Memory: Disk Drives: Controller(s): Disk: Network: Other: Services (versions): sendmail spamassassin mimedefang imp ???? netstat -natp ps -auxww | grep D also realize that x86 hardware has to do various internal hacks to deal with memory above 2-4 Gigs. [2 gigs for some types of hardware and 4 gigs for other types.] Also check for things in your /proc/slabinfo to see if anything is full.. or if dmesg is reporting some sort of network issue. Some weird problems like you have listed have gone away with a mem=2g and seeing how the box performs. If that were to occur.. then it would be motherboard/cpu/pci card related and the only real fix is to go with a 64 bit MB/CPU (Opteron/Itanium/sparc64 type stuff). -- Stephen John Smoogen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Los Alamos National Lab CCN-5 Sched 5/40 PH: 4-0645 Ta-03 SM-1498 MailStop B255 DP 10S Los Alamos, NM 87545 -- So shines a good deed in a weary world. = Willy Wonka -- _______________________________________________ Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.canit.ca MIMEDefang mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
