As I am pushing almost 3 months since a reboot, I am finding that many things are running extremely slowly, as of late. I have 512MB RAM, yet I still push into swap, even when I should not (e.g. even in init 1 with only the essentials running, I still use ~488MB RAM). I know how to clear the swap without rebooting, however I would like to know how to clear unused addresses of the RAM without rebooting? If any one knows how to do this, or a utility to do this, please enlighten me :) Thanks, -John -=JericAtSbcglobalDotNetwork=- 84 days 18 hrs 05 min, since last reboot. Did you know ... Firewalls, NATs, VPN, WindowsXP, and many other security/networking tools are technically ILLEGAL in the states of DE, IL, MD, MI, WY, PA, MA and VA? Stop the insanity, before its too late! (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html for links to the laws)
On Monday 12 May 2003 14:33 pm, Jeric wrote:
As I am pushing almost 3 months since a reboot, I am finding that many things are running extremely slowly, as of late. I have 512MB RAM, yet I still push into swap, even when I should not (e.g. even in init 1 with only the essentials running, I still use ~488MB RAM). I know how to clear the swap without rebooting, however I would like to know how to clear unused addresses of the RAM without rebooting? If any one knows how to do this, or a utility to do this, please enlighten me :)
Thanks, -John
And what do you expect to gain by this, even if it was possible?
-=JericAtSbcglobalDotNetwork=- 84 days 18 hrs 05 min, since last reboot. Did you know ... Firewalls, NATs, VPN, WindowsXP, and many other security/networking tools are technically ILLEGAL in the states of DE, IL, MD, MI, WY, PA, MA and VA? Stop the insanity, before its too late! (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html for links to the laws)
-- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 05/12/03 18:44 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Anagram: A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place
On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 17:45, Bruce Marshall wrote:
And what do you expect to gain by this, even if it was possible?
To keep from continually/unnecessarily using swap which greatly degrades system performance. With 512MB RAM, and the programs which I run, I should not be touching my swap. So, is it possible? I know it is in windows, but I have not been able to find a Linux utility for this procedure. -John -=JericAtSbcglobalDotNetwork=- 84 days 22 hrs 44 min, since last reboot. Did you know? Firewalls, NATs, VPN, WindowsXP, and many other security/networking tools are technically ILLEGAL in the states of DE, IL, MD, MI, WY, PA, MA and VA. Stop the insanity, before its too late! (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html for links to the laws)
On Monday 12 May 2003 19:08 pm, Jeric wrote:
On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 17:45, Bruce Marshall wrote:
And what do you expect to gain by this, even if it was possible?
To keep from continually/unnecessarily using swap which greatly degrades system performance. With 512MB RAM, and the programs which I run, I should not be touching my swap.
So, is it possible? I know it is in windows, but I have not been able to find a Linux utility for this procedure.
-John
Swap won't hurt you one bit unless it is continuously used... and I doubt if that is the case. Stuff can get tossed out in swap, when you start up OO for example (no I'm not saying that you started OO) and it may then sit there until it is needed. Which may not be for a long time. So, in answer to your original question: 1) No, there's no way to free up swap (or allocated memory) without rebooting or at least killing the programs that are using swap. 2) No, I doubt very much if it is hurting you at all. 3) If you're still upset about it, get more memory.
-=JericAtSbcglobalDotNetwork=- 84 days 22 hrs 44 min, since last reboot. Did you know? Firewalls, NATs, VPN, WindowsXP, and many other security/networking tools are technically ILLEGAL in the states of DE, IL, MD, MI, WY, PA, MA and VA. Stop the insanity, before its too late! (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html for links to the laws)
-- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 05/12/03 19:44 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "I took an IQ test and the results were negative."
On Monday 12 May 2003 19:08 pm, Jeric wrote:
On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 17:45, Bruce Marshall wrote:
And what do you expect to gain by this, even if it was possible?
To keep from continually/unnecessarily using swap which greatly degrades system performance. With 512MB RAM, and the programs which I run, I should not be touching my swap.
So, is it possible? I know it is in windows, but I have not been able to find a Linux utility for this procedure.
-John
Swap won't hurt you one bit unless it is continuously used... and I doubt if that is the case. Stuff can get tossed out in swap, when you start up OO for example (no I'm not saying that you started OO) and it may then sit there until it is needed. Which may not be for a long time.
So, in answer to your original question:
1) No, there's no way to free up swap (or allocated memory) without rebooting or at least killing the programs that are using swap.
2) No, I doubt very much if it is hurting you at all.
3) If you're still upset about it, get more memory.
My machine has 1 gig of ram and I see some use of swap. I think it's normal.
->> Swap won't hurt you one bit unless it is continuously used... and I ->> doubt if that is the case. Stuff can get tossed out in swap, when you ->> start up OO for example (no I'm not saying that you started OO) and it ->> may then sit there until it is needed. Which may not be for a long ->My machine has 1 gig of ram and I see some use of swap. I think it's normal. Unless this is a heavy used server or you don't have that much memory for what your doing then swap isn't that important. My home machine has been chugging along very happy with 1G of RAM and no swap. When I use to make a swap space I never saw more then 1M used until the more recent kernels. It shouldn't need to use swap when 700+ megs of ram are open..so I simply didn't make one. I usually run quite a bit of software at home and I never seem to even break the 500M used mark. Just my 0.02. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in the opposite direction.
->> Swap won't hurt you one bit unless it is continuously used... and I ->> doubt if that is the case. Stuff can get tossed out in swap, when you ->> start up OO for example (no I'm not saying that you started OO) and it ->> may then sit there until it is needed. Which may not be for a long
->My machine has 1 gig of ram and I see some use of swap. I think it's normal.
Unless this is a heavy used server or you don't have that much memory for what your doing then swap isn't that important. My home machine has been chugging along very happy with 1G of RAM and no swap. When I use to make a swap space I never saw more then 1M used until the more recent kernels. It shouldn't need to use swap when 700+ megs of ram are open..so I simply didn't make one. I usually run quite a bit of software at home and I never seem to even break the 500M used mark.
Just my 0.02.
The newer kernels must be using most of RAM for buffers or something because with 1G RAM my machine should really never needs swap. Yet here I sit with 16M into SWAP. It doesn't grow ( far as I can tell ), but I sure would like an indication that this is normal behaviour.
On Monday 12 May 2003 20:17, Jim Norton wrote: (snip)
The newer kernels must be using most of RAM for buffers or something because with 1G RAM my machine should really never needs swap. Yet here I sit with 16M into SWAP.
It doesn't grow ( far as I can tell ), but I sure would like an indication that this is normal behaviour. ==================
Jim, I am certainly not an expert in this matter, but I believe from my past experiences, 16mb of SWAP is not abnormal behavior. Maybe unusual because of a misbehaving program or something sometime. I have 512mb as well and seldom see swap touched, but occasionally it gets into it when cleaning up things in the system. Someone more knowledgable about the subject can probably clarify the matter for us, but I think you are ok there. If you see it continually using swap, then I would be looking for something, but I don't think that is the case for you. Patrick -- --- KMail v1.5.1 --- SuSE Linux Pro v8.2 --- Registered Linux User #225206 On any other day, that might seem strange...
On Monday 12 May 2003 20:17 pm, Jim Norton wrote:
->> Swap won't hurt you one bit unless it is continuously used... and I ->> doubt if that is the case. Stuff can get tossed out in swap, when you ->> start up OO for example (no I'm not saying that you started OO) and it ->> may then sit there until it is needed. Which may not be for a long
->My machine has 1 gig of ram and I see some use of swap. I think it's normal.
Unless this is a heavy used server or you don't have that much memory for what your doing then swap isn't that important. My home machine has been chugging along very happy with 1G of RAM and no swap. When I use to make a swap space I never saw more then 1M used until the more recent kernels. It shouldn't need to use swap when 700+ megs of ram are open..so I simply didn't make one. I usually run quite a bit of software at home and I never seem to even break the 500M used mark.
Just my 0.02.
The newer kernels must be using most of RAM for buffers or something because with 1G RAM my machine should really never needs swap. Yet here I sit with 16M into SWAP.
It doesn't grow ( far as I can tell ), but I sure would like an indication that this is normal behaviour.
Do you feel it is hurting your performance?? Somewhere in Linux there is probably a tool which will show you the 'page rate' or really the 'swap rate'. That's the *ONLY* thing that counts. If you're not swapping at a good rate, then it's not hurting you. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 05/12/03 21:37 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things."
Do you feel it is hurting your performance?? Somewhere in Linux there is probably a tool which will show you the 'page rate' or really the 'swap rate'. That's the *ONLY* thing that counts. If you're not swapping at a good rate, then it's not hurting you.
vmstat will tell you that. Do a 'vmstat 1 10' and look at the 'si' and 'so' fields. As a matter of interest I ran vmstat and then jumped to one of my otherwise completely unused virtual terminals and logged in. Sure enough: procs memory swap io system cpu r b w swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id 0 0 0 32948 36276 348880 264708 0 0 0 0 110 423 2 1 97 1 0 0 32880 35948 348880 264724 96 0 112 28 117 457 2 2 96 1 0 0 32880 35952 348880 264724 0 0 0 0 104 409 0 3 97 96 pages suddenly swapped in - probably the only swap activity the machine has seen for hours. So my guess in my other post appears correct: the kernel has swapped out those unused virtual terminal processes and is using the memory for something more useful. Well, that was moderately interesting. Back to work.... :o) -- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003
To keep from continually/unnecessarily using swap which greatly degrades system performance. With 512MB RAM, and the programs which I run, I should not be touching my swap.
So, is it possible? I know it is in windows, but I have not been able to find a Linux utility for this procedure.
The Linux kernel knows what it's doing a lot better than you do. Some very clever people have gone to huge amounts of trouble to work out how your hardware is best utilised. Even if you find a way to force the memory handling to do something it doesn't naturally want to do, the kernel will just spend the next few minutes working hard to get things back to how it should be. If your swap is thrashing, you have a problem; it it isn't, you don't. As for not touching swap if you think you have enough memory, that's nonsense. I have 1GB of RAM and my swap partition has some stuff in it. I suspect the kernel has noticed that my login manager isn't doing anything, nor are the 6 virtual terminals which got started at boot time. These processes, and others like them, have probably been swapped out so the physical memory can be used for something useful, like buffers and caching. That's just how it should be. -- "...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE ...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003
participants (6)
-
Ben Rosenberg -
Bruce Marshall -
Derek Fountain -
Jeric -
jrn＠oregonhanggliding.com -
O'Smith