Re: Memory management
Hi Andrei,
Memory is a *lot* quicker to access then hard disk, so linux attempts to
keep memory as full as possible by caching files that have been used
from the hard disk, hoping that they will be used again and can be read
from memory rather than hard disk.
If you are interested in tuning how your virtual memory subsystem works
then you can alter the values in /proc/sys/vm (see proc.txt in the
Documentation directory in the kernel source)
Pete.
On 29-Aug-1999, Andrei Ivanov <c680789@showme.missouri.edu> wrote:
> Hi all. Ever since I went from kernel 2.0.36 to 2.2.10 (Still glibc2.0),
> my system has been having an interesting memory management.
> 1. When Iboot the syste up, memory consumed is right where it should be.
> Shortly after a startup, memory usage goes from 20M (Right after boot) to
> completely fill the physical Ram. top shows a large amount of data in
> buffered memory.
> Once I run some programs like Netscape, memory usage goes up (as it
> should) but upon closure of application it does not completely return to a
> normal state as it was before, instead a lot of memory is being cached.
> Here is a record of top at the moment, just running X (12x10@24) and 2
> aterms with a xchat:
>
> CPU states: 6.2% user, 1.3% system, 0.0% nice, 92.6% idle
> Mem: 47180K av, 45904K used, 1276K free, 10496K shrd, 980K buff
> Swap: 110808K av, 13732K used, 97076K free 15292K cached
>
> Note the large amount of memory cached.
> Now I start Netscape.
>
> CPU states: 5.8% user, 1.1% system, 0.0% nice, 93.1% idle
> Mem: 47180K av, 45936K used, 1244K free, 12628K shrd, 980K buff
> Swap: 110808K av, 14804K used, 96004K free 11816K cached
>
> I don't know what to make of it. Is the system keeping some apps in memory
> for better performance at startup? This is a problem because of the
> swapping that takes place while running programs.
> Please help to fix this (a full upgrade to slink would be out of the
> question, because I simply dont have time to reinstall the system and
> recompile apps that need recompiling.)
> This has happened with 2.2.10 and 2.2.11 kernels. Even if I revert back to
> 2.0.36, this problem still persists.
> Any ideas?
> Andrew
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andrei S. Ivanov
> Scorpio@hushmail.com
> c680789@showme.missouri.edu
> UIN 12402354
> http://scorpio.myip.org <--All the pages bundled together.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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----
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Peter Ross M Sci/Eng Melbourne Uni |
| petdr@cs.mu.oz.au WWW: www.cs.mu.oz.au/~petdr/ ph: +61 3 9344 9158 |
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