[Re: [Re: [lug] Memory problem]]

Tue Nov 28 17:15:49 MST 2000

I used top as well to look into the problem. It displayed the same info that I
got when running procinfo. The only reason this concerned me was because the
box usually hangs around at about 95megs usage. I haven't seen any performance
drops or abnormal swap usage yet, but I've had problems with a different
machine in the past where the memory got hogged to the point of not being able
to do a single task on the box. 

Justin

"John Hernandez" <John.Hernandez at noaa.gov> wrote:
> I use 'top' to get insight into problems like these.  No X required. 
> 'M' sorts processes by memory usage (at least on newer versions), hogs
> at the top of the list.  Are you having performance problems?  The
> reason I ask is that it's quite normal for Linux (and OS kernels in
> general) to find equilibrium at a point where most of the physical RAM
> is used.  Excessive paging/swapping is really what hurts performance. 
> On my perfectly responsive and fairly happy box (running two typical
> bloated offenders), I see:
> 
> Mem:   128204K av,  125580K used,    2624K free,   62548K shrd,    2796K
> buff
> Swap:  265032K av,   29948K used,  235084K free                   18380K
> cached
> 
>   PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT  LIB %CPU %MEM   TIME
> COMMAND
>  8643 me         2   0 82140  54M  6028 S       0  0.0 43.7  11:10
> netscape-com
>  8576 root       9   0 52412  49M  2700 S       0  0.0 39.6   6:30 X
> 
> Anyone running Netscape 6 (full blown Communicator) or a recent Mozilla
> on a 2.2 kernel?  How do they behave, particularly wrt memory footprint?
> 
> Justin wrote:
> > 
> > Hrmm, that could be the problem, and it was just a couple weeks ago since
the
> > counterstrike 1.0 server release. I can test it by rebooting the box once
more
> > to clear the memory and I just won't run the CS server for a while and
see
> > what happens. Thanks.
> > 
> > Justin
> > 
> > Shannon Johnston <nunar at iws.net> wrote:
> > > I noticed you're running CounterStrike. According to the hlds_l mailing
> > > list, the newer version of the hlds_l has a pretty severe memory leak.
> > > It's behaving a lot like you're describing. (lots of mem usage with no
> > > obvious casue.)
> > >
> > > Shannon Johnston
> > >
> > > On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, D. Stimits wrote:
> > >
> > > > Justin wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm running into a memory issue on my main server machine. I have
never
> > had
> > > > > this problem before and it seemed to start within the last 2 weeks.
> > Using
> > > > > procinfo I am seeing the memory usage gradually increasing until it
> > reaches
> > > > > the max of 128megs. Last week I started killing off process's
randomly
> > to see
> > > > > if that free'd memory but no luck. I tried restarting all my main
server
> > apps
> > > > > including apache, postfix, identd, syslog, inetd, and some others.
The
> > memory
> > > > > usage still showed the same, but when doing a ps aux none of the
> > process's
> > > > > seemed to be hogging any memory. I ended up shutting down and
booting
> > back up
> > > > > to clear the memory problem. After the reboot the mem usage,
according
> > to
> > > > > procinfo, was about 50megs. After my users had started up all their
> > stuff
> > > > > again the memory was up to about 90megs, which is normal. I ran my
> > > > > counterstrike server for a while saturday night, which consumes
about
> > 28megs,
> > > > > then shut it down later on. The memory dropped back down to around
> > 90megs
> > > > > after that but has been increasing daily for no particular reason.
It's
> > now at
> > > > > about 122megs of the max 128, and the only thing I've done since
the
> > weekend
> > > > > was update my BIND to P7. Any way to trouble shoot this or any ideas
of
> > what
> > > > > might be going on? The box is Redhat 6.1 (updated) w/ kernel
2.2.15.
> > Thanks in
> > > > > advance for any help.
> > > > >
> > > > > Justin
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Sometimes, depending on how you are measuring the memory use, the
> > > > meassurements can be deceptive. Released memory will sometimes not be
> > > > simply released, but will instead end up cached. And if you are
running
> > > > an X server, your video card memory can be measured as part of the
> > > > system ram...if it has 32 megs and the system 128, you could see up
to
> > > > 160 megs in use. One thing I'd suggest is using a tool that
> > > > distinguishes between just ram used, and cache. Try xosview if you
can.
> > > >
> > > > If it turns out that you do have memory being used up, it's possible
> > > > that one of your apps has a memory leak. Sometimes a restart
mechanism
> > > > to a daemon does not actually kill the app, but simply tells it to
> > > > re-read its init files; if this is the case, memory won't go down
after
> > > > a restart. Try a full stop and stop.
> > > >
> 
> -- 
> 
> John Hernandez, Network Engineer --------------------------------------
> US Department of Commerce                             tel: 303-497-6392
> NOAA/OAR - Mailstop R/OM12                            fax: 303-497-6005
> 325 Broadway                            e-mail: John.Hernandez at noaa.gov
> Boulder, CO 80303                               http://boulder.noaa.gov
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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