OK - I'm recognizing all my (256Mb) memory without the option & I'm not
knowingly doing anything thready. However, it appears I was fibbing about
the memory beeing hogged from the start - before I do anything I get
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 257536 28592 228944 13976 1988 13524
-/+ buffers/cache: 13080 244456
Swap: 272136 0 272136
28Mb for a fantastic operating system - no problem. Even with X + gnome
on top I'm not too concerned (though I might go back to fvwm or something
littler than gnome/sawfish)
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 257536 63896 193640 46632 3204 30312
-/+ buffers/cache: 30380 227156
Swap: 272136 0 272136
So what it looks like to me is that there is a problem freeing up memory
after a program has closed - for example open netscape and then close it
before
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 257536 65816 191720 47980 3268 30648
-/+ buffers/cache: 31900 225636
Swap: 272136 0 272136
during
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 257536 86244 171292 59508 3456 43056
-/+ buffers/cache: 39732 217804
Swap: 272136 0 272136
after
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 257536 80148 177388 48200 3572 43116
-/+ buffers/cache: 33460 224076
Swap: 272136 0 272136
So quite quickly you can stack up over 100Mb of "used" memory which never
seems to come free again. This hasn't been a problem so far on this
machine, but a colleague who only has 128Mb in her machine quickly
gets into ugly swapping situations.
Yours,
Brian
On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Paul Millar wrote:
>
> One off the top of my head: have you included a mem=xxxM boot option? Two
> machines booted RH7.0 with 128Mb installed (and detected by the BIOS), but
> the kernel ignored this and assumed 64Mb. Easy to check and fix, but
> something like it might be the problem.
>
> Failing that, what _is_ the output from free and top?
>
> HTH
>
> Paul.
>
> On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Brian Smith wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've noticed that on the machines I've set up with RH7.0 a huge
> > chunk of the memory is blown (like 100Mb as reported by free or top)
> > before I start doing anything - even before I start X. Is this 'cos the
> > stock kernel has too much extra compiled in or should I be looking
> > elsewhere? No processes reported by ps seems to be all that huge - are
> > there any prettier tools I can use analyse memory usage (à la IRIX
> > gmemusage)? Any pointers appreciated.
> >
> > Brian
> >
> > Dr. Brian O. Smith ----------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Edinburgh,
> > King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JR, UK.
> > Tel: 0131 650 7051/7045/4704 Fax: 0131 650 7055
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk
> > http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Paul Millar yo-yo, n. :
> Particle Physics Theory Group Something that is occasionally
> Department of Physics and Astronomy up but normally down.
> University of Glasgow, (see also Computer)
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Scotland +44 (0)141 330 4717
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk
> http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Dr. Brian O. Smith ----------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Edinburgh,
King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JR, UK.
Tel: 0131 650 7051/7045/4704 Fax: 0131 650 7055
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