How to clear/flush the INACT_DIRTY in MEMORY

cabloy · 11-16-2004, 11:09 PM

Hello....
Somebody who could help us. Is there a way to clear or flush the INACT_DIRTY in Memory Information or somebody could explain what does it mean. See below for your reference,.

thanks in advance.

cat /proc/meminfo
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 4022005760 3963990016 58015744 9580544 1474609152 1991073792
Swap: 4294885376 11636736 4283248640
MemTotal: 3927740 kB
MemFree: 56656 kB
MemShared: 9356 kB
Buffers: 1440048 kB
Cached: 1943484 kB
SwapCached: 924 kB
Active: 1976848 kB
Inact_dirty: 1396992 kB
Inact_clean: 19972 kB
Inact_target: 981860 kB
HighTotal: 3080168 kB
HighFree: 2036 kB
LowTotal: 847572 kB
LowFree: 54620 kB
SwapTotal: 4194224 kB
SwapFree: 4182860 kB
BigPagesFree: 0 kB

J.W. · 11-17-2004, 02:25 PM

Welcome to LQ. This article discusses meminfo -- J.W.

cabloy · 12-07-2004, 11:42 PM

Hi J.W thanks for the info. but same question how can i clear the inact_dirty memory. I try to reboot the server the KB size for the inact_dirty memory was decrease.

But is there another way to clear it or something to do with the patch.

Our linux version is 2.4.9-e34smp

thanks in advance.

visaris · 12-07-2004, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Inact_dirty: Dirty means "might need writing to disk or swap." Takes more work to free. Examples might be files that have not been written to yet. They aren't written to memory too soon in order to keep the I/O down. For instance, if you're writing logs, it might be better to wait until you have a complete log ready before sending it to disk.

I don't know how to flush/free all of it, but it most of the Inact_dirty pages are from file I/O, you can always type "sync" to sync this data to disk. That should allow the synced pages to be freed much faster.. Not really what you are looking for, but I hope it's a step in the right direction..

cabloy · 12-12-2004, 08:19 PM

Hi visaris thanks for the info. But as of now were currently testing the patch to solve the issue.

thanks