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Linux memory Usage

5 messages in this thread

list Vaishnavi R · Thu, 20 Apr 2006 07:56:27 -0400 ·
Hi friends,

I have installed Hobbit on Red Hat ES Linux.
Everything works fine but I feel the memory usage by Hobbit is high.

My Hobbit version is 4.1.2p1

I am not very good on Linux and am not sure how to find out which process is
consuming so much memory. The reason for my concern is especially because
the server had crashed after a week of Hobbit running continuously. There is
nothing but couple of apache web sites running on that server( Those ae also
experimental sites and dont have much activity on them)

Following is  a snapshot of how memory was used
Initial
@Thu Apr 20 03:05:45 IST 2006
                   total       used       free     shared    buffers
cached
Mem:       2066872    1631232     435640          0      98028    1230052
-/+ buffers/cache:     303152    1763720
Swap:      8193108        160    8192948

Started Hobbit
@Thu Apr 20 03:11:08 IST 2006
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2066872    1639936     426936          0      98612    1233888
-/+ buffers/cache:     307436    1759436
Swap:      8193108        160    8192948

@Thu Apr 20 03:47:42 IST 2006
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2066872    1644304     422568          0     101072    1235068
-/+ buffers/cache:     308164    1758708
Swap:      8193108        160    8192948

@Thu Apr 20 09:16:34 IST 2006
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2066872    1868176     198696          0     143732    1364528
-/+ buffers/cache:     359916    1706956
Swap:      8193108        160    8192948

Stopped Hobbit
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2066872    1865080     201792          0     144216    1364564
-/+ buffers/cache:     356300    1710572
Swap:      8193108        160    8192948

I would be grateful for any pointers to resolving this problem.
--
Thanks and regards,
Vaishnavi R

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list Henrik Størner · Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:33:00 +0200 ·
quoted from Vaishnavi R
On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 07:56:27AM -0400, Vaishnavi R wrote:
I have installed Hobbit on Red Hat ES Linux.
Everything works fine but I feel the memory usage by Hobbit is high.

My Hobbit version is 4.1.2p1

I am not very good on Linux and am not sure how to find out which process is
consuming so much memory.
[snip]
Following is  a snapshot of how memory was used
The data you provide is simply not enough to say what is using your
memory.

A look at your data shows a couple of things:

1) Swap is just not used - it stays constant at 160 KB. So there's
   really no memory pressure at all.

2) The "used" column in the "-/+ buffers/cache" is what you should 
   be looking at. Linux will use lots of memory for various types
   of disk caches, but these can be freed instantaneously if some
   application needs memory. So when evaluating your memory usage,
   you shouldn't really count the buffer/cache memory as "used".
   Memory usage grows from ~296 MB upon startup to ~300 MB after 
   starting Hobbit - it seems quite reasonable for Hobbit to use 
   4 MB of memory just to run. Half an hour later, it's grown an 
   extra MB, which is also normal as more data is being recorded
   by Hobbit. After that it should be stable, unless you add more 
   tests or hosts, of course.
   6 hours later you're up to 350 MB used - whether that is used
   by Hobbit or something else I cannot tell.


What you *really* should do is to see how much memory the different
processes are using. E.g.

   $ ps vax --sort -rss

will show a list of all processes currently running, sorted by memory
usage. That should give you a much better clue at what is using memory
on your system. I am fairly confident that you'll see Hobbit is not
using a lot of memory. If I run this on my main production system (which
is also running 4.1.2p1, incidentally), I get this:

$ ps v --sort -rss -u hobbit
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS  RSS %MEM COMMAND
  745 ?        S    1780:29     1   162 27077 25600  2.4 hobbitd --pidfile
 1241 ?        S    918:42      1   154 11789 10008  0.9 hobbitd_alert --c
 1242 ?        S    2638:33     7   167  6696 2984  0.2 hobbitd_rrd --rrdd
27775 ?        S    153:39      1   146  4341 2704  0.2 hobbitd_client
27774 ?        S     63:42      0    99  2844 1832  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
 6171 ?        S    338:33      1   167  5624 1736  0.1 hobbitd_rrd --rrdd
 6582 ?        S      0:00      0   669  2002 1344  0.1 sh -c vmstat 300 2
 1234 ?        S    3099:30     1    99  2332 1264  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
 1233 ?        S    629:37      1    99  2332 1200  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
 1232 ?        S     12:41      1    99  2332 1184  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
 6170 ?        S    153:12      0    99  2332 1144  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
 1243 ?        S     21:55      0   108  2515 1136  0.1 hobbitd_history
 6584 ?        S      0:00      0    79  1824  760  0.0 vmstat 300 2
  743 ?        Ss     1:06      0   101  1802  696  0.0 hobbitlaunch --con

This system has 1 GB of memory, and handles over 2000 monitored hosts.
It's been running since March 12. And Hobbit uses 52 MB of memory (sum
of the RSS column, where numbers are in KB).


Regards,
Henrik
list Vaishnavi R · Thu, 20 Apr 2006 10:57:57 -0400 ·
Hello,

Thanks so much for the prompt response. I tried
   $ ps vax --sort -rss and Hobbit is not at the top. I shall be montiroing
for a day just to be sure.

Thanks again.

Regards,
Vaishnavi
quoted from Henrik Størner

On 4/20/06, Henrik Stoerner <user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 07:56:27AM -0400, Vaishnavi R wrote:
I have installed Hobbit on Red Hat ES Linux.
Everything works fine but I feel the memory usage by Hobbit is high.

My Hobbit version is 4.1.2p1

I am not very good on Linux and am not sure how to find out which
process is
consuming so much memory.
[snip]
Following is  a snapshot of how memory was used
The data you provide is simply not enough to say what is using your
memory.

A look at your data shows a couple of things:

1) Swap is just not used - it stays constant at 160 KB. So there's
   really no memory pressure at all.

2) The "used" column in the "-/+ buffers/cache" is what you should
   be looking at. Linux will use lots of memory for various types
   of disk caches, but these can be freed instantaneously if some
   application needs memory. So when evaluating your memory usage,
   you shouldn't really count the buffer/cache memory as "used".
   Memory usage grows from ~296 MB upon startup to ~300 MB after
   starting Hobbit - it seems quite reasonable for Hobbit to use
   4 MB of memory just to run. Half an hour later, it's grown an
   extra MB, which is also normal as more data is being recorded
   by Hobbit. After that it should be stable, unless you add more
   tests or hosts, of course.
   6 hours later you're up to 350 MB used - whether that is used
   by Hobbit or something else I cannot tell.


What you *really* should do is to see how much memory the different
processes are using. E.g.

   $ ps vax --sort -rss

will show a list of all processes currently running, sorted by memory
usage. That should give you a much better clue at what is using memory
on your system. I am fairly confident that you'll see Hobbit is not
using a lot of memory. If I run this on my main production system (which
is also running 4.1.2p1, incidentally), I get this:

$ ps v --sort -rss -u hobbit
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS  RSS %MEM COMMAND
  745 ?        S    1780:29     1   162 27077 25600  2.4 hobbitd --pidfile
1241 ?        S    918:42      1   154 11789 10008  0.9 hobbitd_alert --c
1242 ?        S    2638:33     7   167  6696 2984  0.2 hobbitd_rrd --rrdd
27775 ?        S    153:39      1   146  4341 2704  0.2 hobbitd_client
27774 ?        S     63:42      0    99  2844 1832  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
6171 ?        S    338:33      1   167  5624 1736  0.1 hobbitd_rrd --rrdd
6582 ?        S      0:00      0   669  2002 1344  0.1 sh -c vmstat 300 2
1234 ?        S    3099:30     1    99  2332 1264  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
1233 ?        S    629:37      1    99  2332 1200  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
1232 ?        S     12:41      1    99  2332 1184  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
6170 ?        S    153:12      0    99  2332 1144  0.1 hobbitd_channel --
1243 ?        S     21:55      0   108  2515 1136  0.1 hobbitd_history
6584 ?        S      0:00      0    79  1824  760  0.0 vmstat 300 2
  743 ?        Ss     1:06      0   101  1802  696  0.0 hobbitlaunch --con

This system has 1 GB of memory, and handles over 2000 monitored hosts.
It's been running since March 12. And Hobbit uses 52 MB of memory (sum
of the RSS column, where numbers are in KB).


Regards,
Henrik

--
Vaishnavi R

========================================================
This message contains information that may be privileged or confidential and
is the property of Opus Software Solutions Group. It is intended only for
the person to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient,
you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy, disseminate,
distribute, or use this message or any part thereof. If you receive this
message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete all copies
of this message
list Taylor Lewick · Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:52:35 -0500 ·
When I pull up hobbit graphs for memory for one of our database servers with 16 GB of memory, I see the Actual Memory Used is reporting as 657 M and swap is 0 M Used.

But if I run ps -vax --sort -rss  note the top 4 processes...
Looks like just over 7.0 GB of memory is consumed.

I'm deleting PID, TTY and STAT colum to make sure it all fits on one line.

TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
12:39      4  3519 3310360 3193428 19.4 postgres: 
 4:22      0  3519 3312708 3077228 18.7 postgres: 
 0:31      0  3519 3312832 993816  6.0 postgres: 
 0:26      0  3519 3312128 192740  1.1 postgres: 

Output of free shows...
		total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:      16433348   16252424     180924         0     168500   15409800
-/+ buffers/cache:     674124   15759224
Swap:      8355832        540    8355292

So is the system telling me that most of the memory the processes are taking up from the ps -vax output is cached and can be released at any time?

Thanks,
list Dominique Frise · Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:52:01 +0200 ·
quoted from Taylor Lewick
Taylor Lewick wrote:
When I pull up hobbit graphs for memory for one of our database servers with 16 GB of memory, I see the Actual Memory Used is reporting as 657 M and swap is 0 M Used.

But if I run ps -vax --sort -rss  note the top 4 processes...
Looks like just over 7.0 GB of memory is consumed.

I'm deleting PID, TTY and STAT colum to make sure it all fits on one line.

TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
12:39      4  3519 3310360 3193428 19.4 postgres:  4:22      0  3519 3312708 3077228 18.7 postgres:  0:31      0  3519 3312832 993816  6.0 postgres:  0:26      0  3519 3312128 192740  1.1 postgres: 
Output of free shows...
		total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:      16433348   16252424     180924         0     168500   15409800
-/+ buffers/cache:     674124   15759224
Swap:      8355832        540    8355292

So is the system telling me that most of the memory the processes are taking up from the ps -vax output is cached and can be released at any time?
That is also what I understand.
"Actual" shows memory that cannot be released.
This value is the one to watch.

Dominique