Swaps 55 mb but 700 MB RAM Free?

SupaDucta · 04-02-2006, 02:22 PM

Top:

Mem: 1033696k total, 241560k used, 792136k free, 1184k buffers
Swap: 2096472k total, 57820k used, 2038652k free, 30344k cached

Free:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1033696 261424 772272 0 5756 52916
-/+ buffers/cache: 202752 830944
Swap: 2096472 57820 2038652

I have installed the box few days ago. From the inital 512 MB RAM, another 512 were added later.

I see it swapping more when it needs, but I dont see any substantial RAM usage changes, even when dumping dbases or something.

Is this normal? How come it has so much free RAM and swaps?

CentOS 4.3, updated to latest, Pentium IV 2.6.

reddazz · 04-04-2006, 01:31 AM

This article may help explain why swap is being used even though there is free ram.

SupaDucta · 04-04-2006, 08:32 AM

Hello reddaz,

I know about that, sorry I was angry at the time of posting and haven't provided anough info:

Code:

cat /boot/config-2.6.9-34.EL | grep HIGH
# CONFIG_X86_HIGH_ENTRY is not set
# CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM is not set
CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set
CONFIG_HIGHMEM=y
CONFIG_HIGHPTE=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_HIGHMEM=y

It is there, my bet is that problem is in CentOS kernel. I will compile from kernel.org today, that should fix it.

reddazz · 04-04-2006, 10:23 AM

You could also just recomplile the CentOS kernel. You need to get the source rpm, change what you want and rebuild.

foo_bar_foo · 04-04-2006, 10:54 PM

i've read about a bug like and other load type problems as well in various 2.6.9-EL kernels
those centos kernels look like RedHat kernels.
thats a bad thing.

SupaDucta · 04-05-2006, 04:45 AM

Here are some more details on my findings, along with the 'top' outputs of several boxes in question:

http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/...=3592&forum=27