* Re: memory usage - continued - iCache/Dentry cacheing bug???
[not found] <Pine.LNX.4.10.10104110917410.28937-100000@coffee.psychology.mc>
@ 2001-04-11 14:23 ` Marcin Kowalski
2001-04-11 14:31 ` John Jasen
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Marcin Kowalski @ 2001-04-11 14:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: hahn, tomlins; +Cc: linux-kernel
Hi
Here is my saga continued. I had as mentioned in the preceding post 500mb of
Inode cache entries and about 80mb of dentry_cache entries, accounting for +-
600mb if "missing" memory.
These should be dynamically de-allocatable, so if a program needs the ram it
will be freed as necessary. So I ran a little memory hog perl script :
---
#!/usr/bin/perl
$fred=1;
@bob=('Test');
while ($fred==1)
{
push (@bob,@bob);
}
------
This naturally started eating memory, unexpectedly the kernel started paging
hectically to swap using 250mb in no time, (ie filling the 1.2gigs of ram).
How can this be??? Shouldn't the cache tables simply be purged in the event
of memory need....
Anyway I then kill the job, suddenly most of my physical ram is freed (250mb
used).
I then do a swapoff /dev/sda3 (250mb used), this completely locks the machine
for 50 seconds and pushes the load to 31 when I can log back in. Then
micraculously I am using only 170mb of physical ram. I turn swap back on and
all is well....
Can anyone please explain this odd behaviour.. ???
Below is a free after this whole debacle..:::
------
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1157444 126364 1031080 0 10924 60080
-/+ buffers/cache: 55360 1102084
Swap: 641016 0 641016
------
> > Regarding this issue, I have a similar problem if I do a free on my
> > system I get :
> > --- total used free shared buffers cached
> > Mem: 1157444 1148120 9324 0 22080 459504
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 666536 490908
> > Swap: 641016 19072 621944
>
> perfect, no problem there.
>
> > Now what I do a ps there seems no way to accound for the 500mb + of
> > memory used. No single or group of processes uses that amount of memory.
> > THis is
>
> of course: the kernel tries hard to keep nearly all memory in use,
> since otherwise it's wasted.
>
> > very disconcerting, coupled with extremely high loads when cache is
> > dumped to disk locking up the machine makes me want to move back to
> > 2.2.19 from 2.4.3.
>
> swapping does not cause high load unless your disk is misconfigured (PIO)
Netraid 4m (AACRAID) card with 80mb of Cache and 6x 10000rpm SCSII III HDD,
I can only hope that the driver is running in DMA.... :-|
> > I would also be curious to see how the kernel is using memory...
>
> caching files.
--
-----------------------------
Marcin Kowalski
Linux/Perl Developer
Datrix Solutions
Cel. 082-400-7603
***Open Source Kicks Ass***
-----------------------------
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: memory usage - continued - iCache/Dentry cacheing bug???
2001-04-11 14:23 ` memory usage - continued - iCache/Dentry cacheing bug??? Marcin Kowalski
@ 2001-04-11 14:31 ` John Jasen
0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: John Jasen @ 2001-04-11 14:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Marcin Kowalski; +Cc: hahn, tomlins, linux-kernel
On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Marcin Kowalski wrote:
> I then do a swapoff /dev/sda3 (250mb used), this completely locks the machine
> for 50 seconds and pushes the load to 31 when I can log back in. Then
> micraculously I am using only 170mb of physical ram. I turn swap back on and
> all is well....
> Can anyone please explain this odd behaviour.. ???
> Below is a free after this whole debacle..:::
another cute way of clearing memory is to do a:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=<total memory> count=1
this will push some stuff into swap; but ...
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: memory usage - continued - iCache/Dentry cacheing bug???
[not found] <Pine.SGI.4.31L.02.0104111030180.3516411-100000@irix2.gl.umbc.e>
@ 2001-04-11 14:50 ` Marcin Kowalski
0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Marcin Kowalski @ 2001-04-11 14:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: jjasen1; +Cc: hahn, tomlins, linux-kernel
Further fun...
Now after bouncing the swap and clearing out memory I decided to run the
test.pl script again to suck up some more memory...
Box dies, pretty much for 15 seconds, when it comes back load is at 8.0
kernel syslog messages..::
----
Apr 11 16:37:13 mkdexii kernel: sym53c896-1-<3,0>: ordered tag forced.
Apr 11 16:37:43 mkdexii last message repeated 2 times
-----
with 181M of Swap in use and 252 mb of Physical RAM.... this is getting
really tricky...
Now to bounce the swap again.... well well IO lock up again, hmmm. sym53c896
driver--- load went up to 12 and now I'm left with 135mb of used physical
ram...
What can I draw from this?? Well memory that is being swapped shouldn't be,
once it is swapped out it doesn't seem to be reaped(my understanding is
lacking :-(( ). In my case 250mb of memory was swapped out during my memory
eater test. The process then died and 750mb of physical ram got freed up but
still 250mb of swap was in use, I then switched off swap and turned it back
on and it was gone. WHy was it there in the first place as I had 750mb of
free physical memory.
Secondly is there a problem with the Sym53c896 driver settings, I upped the
default queu length to 8 and the Synch Freq to 40mhz????, WHy is the machine
locking so badly under high IO... ???
TIA MARCin
--
-----------------------------
Marcin Kowalski
Linux/Perl Developer
Datrix Solutions
Cel. 082-400-7603
***Open Source Kicks Ass***
-----------------------------
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
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[not found] <Pine.LNX.4.10.10104110917410.28937-100000@coffee.psychology.mc>
2001-04-11 14:23 ` memory usage - continued - iCache/Dentry cacheing bug??? Marcin Kowalski
2001-04-11 14:31 ` John Jasen
[not found] <Pine.SGI.4.31L.02.0104111030180.3516411-100000@irix2.gl.umbc.e>
2001-04-11 14:50 ` Marcin Kowalski
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