[SLE] Minimum install still uses 14meg memory
I am in the process of writing a program that will time slot cars around my basement track for Linux. In doing this, it is becoming apparent that I need to have pretty good access to my parallel port - so much so that not many other processes can be running at the same time. I have a minimum install, plus a little networking, installed on my 486-33 box w/ 16 meg ram. However, when doing a "top" last night, I see that almost 15 meg of ram is already being used by other processes - one of which is sendmail. I am obviously going to have to get rid of sendmail, smb, nfs and any other services running on this machine. Are there any other suggestions for what I should be looking for to delete? When I did this "top", I was running in console mode with one user (root) only. There was nothing that appeared to be taking more than 4% of memory - in fact most of the items were taking 0.0 memory. Any suggestions on how I can free up this machine would be appreciated. I need to get it so it is as "fast" and light as a DOS install. Thanks, Stuart -- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732 -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
First take a look at your run levels: Run Level 1 (in SuSE) is multi-user with no network. Run Level S is single user. However, if you need better timings, you might want to hack the parallel port driver. On 23 Mar 00, at 15:11, Stuart Hall wrote:
I am in the process of writing a program that will time slot cars around my basement track for Linux. In doing this, it is becoming apparent that I need to have pretty good access to my parallel port - so much so that not many other processes can be running at the same time.
I have a minimum install, plus a little networking, installed on my 486-33 box w/ 16 meg ram. However, when doing a "top" last night, I see that almost 15 meg of ram is already being used by other processes - one of which is sendmail.
I am obviously going to have to get rid of sendmail, smb, nfs and any other services running on this machine. Are there any other suggestions for what I should be looking for to delete? When I did this "top", I was running in console mode with one user (root) only. There was nothing that appeared to be taking more than 4% of memory - in fact most of the items were taking 0.0 memory.
Any suggestions on how I can free up this machine would be appreciated. I need to get it so it is as "fast" and light as a DOS install.
Thanks, Stuart
-- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
Jerry Feldman
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 10:18:38 -0500, you wrote:
First take a look at your run levels: Run Level 1 (in SuSE) is multi-user with no network. Run Level S is single user. However, if you need better timings, you might want to hack the parallel port driver.
Ahh, this may be part of it. My standard run level is multi-user with networking. That alone might be taking some machine time - all those getty's running around... And I am hacking my own parallel port driver in C++ with ioperm() and inb(0x378), with response times supposedly in the micro-seconds - but I cannot have those micro-second responses from the parallel port waiting for the OS to finish doing some other unnecessary process. thanks for your response. Stuart -- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732 -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
Also, you can change /etc/inittab to reduce the number of gettys, and still have a couple of virtual terminals. On 23 Mar 00, at 15:30, Stuart Hall wrote:
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 10:18:38 -0500, you wrote:
First take a look at your run levels: Run Level 1 (in SuSE) is multi-user with no network. Run Level S is single user. However, if you need better timings, you might want to hack the parallel port driver.
Ahh, this may be part of it. My standard run level is multi-user with networking. That alone might be taking some machine time - all those getty's running around...
Jerry Feldman
If you are not using that machine as a mail server, then you can definately get rid of sendmail. Depending on your networking needs, you may also be able to get rid of portmap and nfs. That should free up some memory for you. Victor On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Stuart Hall wrote:
I am in the process of writing a program that will time slot cars around my basement track for Linux. In doing this, it is becoming apparent that I need to have pretty good access to my parallel port - so much so that not many other processes can be running at the same time.
I have a minimum install, plus a little networking, installed on my 486-33 box w/ 16 meg ram. However, when doing a "top" last night, I see that almost 15 meg of ram is already being used by other processes - one of which is sendmail.
I am obviously going to have to get rid of sendmail, smb, nfs and any other services running on this machine. Are there any other suggestions for what I should be looking for to delete? When I did this "top", I was running in console mode with one user (root) only. There was nothing that appeared to be taking more than 4% of memory - in fact most of the items were taking 0.0 memory.
Any suggestions on how I can free up this machine would be appreciated. I need to get it so it is as "fast" and light as a DOS install.
Thanks, Stuart
-- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
On 23-Mar-00 Stuart Hall wrote:
Any suggestions on how I can free up this machine would be appreciated. I need to get it so it is as "fast" and light as a DOS install.
I think you answered your own question.... DOS !
For such a "real time" application you will probably always have problems with
a standard linux kenel/system.
I have a DOS box that I keep just for such applications.
Peter.
----------------------------------
E-Mail: Peter Onion
Stuart Hall wrote:
I am in the process of writing a program that will time slot cars around my basement track for Linux. In doing this, it is becoming apparent that I need to have pretty good access to my parallel port - so much so that not many other processes can be running at the same time.
I have a minimum install, plus a little networking, installed on my 486-33 box w/ 16 meg ram. However, when doing a "top" last night, I see that almost 15 meg of ram is already being used by other processes - one of which is sendmail.
I am obviously going to have to get rid of sendmail, smb, nfs and any other services running on this machine. Are there any other suggestions for what I should be looking for to delete? When I did this "top", I was running in console mode with one user (root) only. There was nothing that appeared to be taking more than 4% of memory - in fact most of the items were taking 0.0 memory.
Any suggestions on how I can free up this machine would be appreciated. I need to get it so it is as "fast" and light as a DOS install.
Thanks, Stuart
-- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732
I have 64MB RAM and far fewer services, yet 58MB is used! What I'm getting at is the difference between Unix/Linux and DOS memory management. Linux believes unused RAM is wasted RAM, therefore, any unused RAM will be used to buffer the hard drive. No matter how much RAM you have, it will always be used. Even my 128MB desktop machine always uses all of its RAM. Go ahead and get rid of the extra services, but remember, top is not the best tool for looking at your RAM. ps is much better. -- --- George's View on Computer Security --- There are *only* two levels of security: a) Paranoid; and b) None. George Toft http://www.georgetoft.com -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
ooh..also, there used to be a patch for the kernel that would re-order IRQ priorities. couple that with the QNX scheduler patch, and you could prolly get a 'near-real-time' race car clocker..:) -- ======================================================================== Rocky McGaugh Atipa Linux Solutions Product Development www.atipa.com rocky@smluc.org rmcgaugh@atipa.com ======================================================================== On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Stuart Hall wrote:
I am in the process of writing a program that will time slot cars around my basement track for Linux. In doing this, it is becoming apparent that I need to have pretty good access to my parallel port - so much so that not many other processes can be running at the same time.
I have a minimum install, plus a little networking, installed on my 486-33 box w/ 16 meg ram. However, when doing a "top" last night, I see that almost 15 meg of ram is already being used by other processes - one of which is sendmail.
I am obviously going to have to get rid of sendmail, smb, nfs and any other services running on this machine. Are there any other suggestions for what I should be looking for to delete? When I did this "top", I was running in console mode with one user (root) only. There was nothing that appeared to be taking more than 4% of memory - in fact most of the items were taking 0.0 memory.
Any suggestions on how I can free up this machine would be appreciated. I need to get it so it is as "fast" and light as a DOS install.
Thanks, Stuart
-- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 15:11:28 GMT, you wrote:
I am in the process of writing a program that will time slot cars around my basement track for Linux. In doing this, it is becoming apparent that I need to have pretty good access to my parallel port - so much so that not many other processes can be running at the same time.
Thank you so much to everyone for all the advice, especially the hardware specific advice. As much as I hate to admit it, it seems that good ole' command.com (DOS) on a bootable diskette is going to be my operating system for this project. At least it fits on a diskette, is relatively fast, and has direct access to all of the ports that I need. Now to dig up an old bootable diskette. :-) Thanks again, Stuart Hall -- Stuart Hall Cheshire, Connecticut, USA Linux User# 141732 -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Stuart Hall wrote:
I have a minimum install, plus a little networking, installed on my 486-33 box w/ 16 meg ram. However, when doing a "top" last night, I see that almost 15 meg of ram is already being used by other processes - one of which is sendmail.
If you don't intend to be using this box as a mailserver, then you can get rid of sendmail. Don't just kill it, uninstall it. Same sort of thing with other services you don't want. And, 16 meg *is* fairly tight. Particularly if you try to run X. However, you don't necessarily have a problem. You might, or you might not. There are several ways of seeing your memory usage. The most popular two are: free: shows memory and swapfile occupied for various purposes top: 4th/5th lines sames as free However, for seeing if you have a memory problem, the command you want is vmstat and I'll recommend the appropriate man page for details on all fields. But I will direct you to two fields. Toward the middle of the line, the top title is "swap" and under it are two subtitles: "si" and "so". These are the current activity (not allocation, activity) level on the swapfile, measured in kilobytes per second, one for input and one for output. You really really like low numbers in these two fields, particularly in si. Each time si is incremented, it means that - from your application's point of view - time froze for several hundred clock cycles, while it had work it COULD have been doing for you. If si is high, not only do your processes spend a lot of time waiting, so do you. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
Hi, I am going to buy a cheap Second hand PC to run my firewall with my cable modem, what is the main 'feature' I should concentrate on, RAM, processor speed or disk speed? I won't be running X or anything, just the firewall stuff. Cheers Phil -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
I'm running a firewall/masquerade configuration on an IBM aptiva 486 DX4/100 with 24mb memory. Should have been 40 mb memory, if it wasn't that the 3rd memory slot couldn't be used due to an onboard videocard on the motherboard then crashing at startup already. So I say: Stay away from onboard things (Don't know about onboard scsi controllers though :) Good luck at least. Jan Beers The Netherlands.
I am going to buy a cheap Second hand PC to run my firewall with my cable modem, what is the main 'feature' I should concentrate on, RAM, processor speed or disk speed? I won't be running X or anything, just the firewall stuff.
Phil
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-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
Hi,
I am going to buy a cheap Second hand PC to run my firewall with my cable modem, what is the main 'feature' I should concentrate on, RAM, processor speed or disk speed? I won't be running X or anything, just the firewall stuff.
Cheers
Phil
Hi, Yesterday I had to reinstall my firewall/SambaPrintServer (SuSE6.2). It has this specs: P166, 40MB RAM, 128MB HDD, 2 x Realtek 8139 100 Mbit output of TOP: 90% Idle: 9% used by TOP itself, 7480KB RAM free, while FTP'ing through firewall at 1.8e+03 Kbytes/s output of df : 1024 blocks: 122199 Used: 11120 Capacity: 96% So you should concentrate on: RAM > HDD > mobo > network-cards > processor Notice, 128 MB HDD is too small, I had to do it, because my previous HDD suffered from hardware failure after being used for 5 years. Cheers, Reinder -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
Phil Shrimpton wrote:
Hi,
I am going to buy a cheap Second hand PC to run my firewall with my cable modem, what is the main 'feature' I should concentrate on, RAM, processor speed or disk speed? I won't be running X or anything, just the firewall stuff.
What else will the machine be doing? My firewall does firewall,sendmail,leafnode,masquerade and dns. It's running on a pentium/100 with 32meg of ram. The machine isn't being stressed out at all. It's actually barely running. My suggestion find a windows user who is getting a new machine. Likely his old machine is overkill for what you need. Likely the most you will want to do is swap out the HD for something bigger. But if you aren't running a local newserver even that isn't an issue. One thing check the bios. Older bios won't handle the new large HDs. Considering how hard it's getting to even find a smaller HD today that might be an issue. One reason I've always liked Asus is they keep providing bios updates forever. My firewall machine got a bios update this year. Thats for a system based on Asus's first pentium 90/100 MB. HX chipset? Nick -- Nick Zentena "The Linux issue," Wladawsky-Berger explained, "is whether this is a fundamentally disruptive technology, like the microprocessor and the Internet? We're betting that it is." -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Nick Zentena wrote:
One thing check the bios. Older bios won't handle the new large HDs.
Any BIOS with HD autodetection will do. You just need to be able to get 4-10 meg in the first 1,023 cylinders. For a partition which you will map to /boot. Then the Linux kernel takes over, and the BIOS disk routines no longer matter. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
Doesent matter any more. create a /boot partion at the start , then when the kernal starts up it will read what the drive is and see the rest of it. You can even screw with the setting on the real old bios that dont autdetect , so it will see somthing to boot and load the kernal. once th3e kernal takes over it sees whats actualy there. There are ven optios to pass the kernal the actual drive specs as well. Linux you know. You can do anything with it. At 11:24 PM 3/24/2000 -0800, Warrl wrote:
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Nick Zentena wrote:
One thing check the bios. Older bios won't handle the new large HDs.
Any BIOS with HD autodetection will do. You just need to be able to get 4-10 meg in the first 1,023 cylinders. For a partition which you will map to /boot.
Then the Linux kernel takes over, and the BIOS disk routines no longer matter.
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com
Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/
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participants (12)
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gaf@blu.org
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grtoft@yahoo.com
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jebeers@penguinservices.nl
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phil@shrimpton.co.uk
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ponion@srd.bt.co.uk
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r.cuperus@student.utwente.nl
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rmcgaugh@atipa.com
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samelash@ix.netcom.com
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stuarthall@mailandnews.com
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vcardona@home.com
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warrl@blarg.net
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zentena@hophead.dyndns.org