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Hey guys I had a quick question for you experts and hopefully you can help me out. I run Slackware 10.1 as a router running numerous servers for my LAN. I have noticed lately that the machine seems to be running low on RAM. The wierd thing is that when there is a fresh boot the RAM is fine, it has a total of 300mb is a Athlon 1.4.
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
149 nobody 9 0 3136 3136 3056 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.00 httpd
150 nobody 9 0 3136 3136 3056 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.00 httpd
151 nobody 9 0 3136 3136 3056 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.00 httpd
148 root 9 0 3116 3116 3028 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.03 httpd
153 root 9 0 2424 2424 2272 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 smbd
155 root 9 0 2408 2408 2256 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 smbd
161 nobody 9 0 1892 1892 1368 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 proftpd
122 root 8 0 1852 1852 1296 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 named
131 root 9 0 1744 1740 1588 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 sshd
173 darvocet 12 0 1712 1712 1556 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 sshd
174 darvocet 11 0 1620 1620 1176 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.02 bash
185 root 17 0 1512 1512 1104 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.01 bash
119 root 9 0 1500 1500 1244 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.11 sshd
156 root 9 0 1448 1448 1076 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.01 nmbd
159 root 9 0 1360 1360 812 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 dhcpd
187 root 18 0 1028 1028 824 R 0.3 0.3 0:00.02 top
137 daemon 9 0 664 664 576 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 atd
.....................
So it seems like slackware is just leeching the RAM somewhere, and I can't find where it's going. I try to have it set to not load programs that I do not use at boot, so the boot is smooth, and the memory use after a boot looks very good to me. But using 97-99% after 20ish hours of uptime is horriable.
slackware isn't leeching your ram... linux is just keeping a lot of cache in ram to help make things faster... notice how your swap hasn't been touched... if linux needs more memory for some process, it will free-up the cached stuff and let it use that... linux tries to use as much memory as it can for cacheing in order to enhance performance... the ram used for caches will NOT keep your processes from getting the memory they need, since the cache will be freed if needed... this is why your swap usage is still at zero...
Originally posted by win32sux
linux tries to use as much memory as it can for cacheing in order to enhance performance... the ram used for caches will NOT keep your processes from getting the memory they need, since the cache will be freed if needed... this is why your swap usage is still at zero...
okay i'll buy that, if I can get a verification that this is most likely the problem then I will move on. I just want to make sure that the network isnt going to experience any speed/reliability issues because of the system using more ram that normal.
Thanks! Anyone else pretty sure this is the issue?
Heh, in top output you posted the proces with most memory consumption takes only 1.8% of total memory :-)
Btw. you are running apache and another numerous servers on a router ? If it's not a SOHO network it's pretty ugly thing (TM) ;-)
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