William L. Maltby wrote: >On Sun, 2006-06-04 at 09:57 -0400, Sam Drinkard wrote: > > >>William L. Maltby wrote: >> >> >> >>>On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 19:18 -0400, Sam Drinkard wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>Johnny, >>>> >>>> After reading about the VM issue, I concur. <snip> >>>> >>>> > > > >>>I forget the start of this thread... was 64 bit only? Anyway, I had my >>>32bit lock a couple times with symptoms like Sam mentions. Lots of swap >>>used and no reason for it. Was using lots of open browsers, a couple >>>different GUI MUAs, etc. >>> >>>Turned off things I didn't need <snip> >>> >>> > > > >>>A *biggie*, maybe, is the stupid readahead and readahead_early stuff. >>><snip> >>> >>> > > > >>>Up now for 6 days running similar load (I think, haven't bothered to >>>really measure it) and swap use is still good and response is still >>>good. >>><snip> >>> >>> > > > >>After uptime of a little over 3 days now, I'm not seeing any increase in >>swap as I did prior, but then again, I don't exactly recall how long it >>took before swap started increasing. >> >> > >For my symptoms to appear, it took a combo of time up and an increase in >load. Don't know if this is coincidence or cause and effect. > > > >>One thing I do notice is for some >>reason, the applications that nomally would consume between 1.2 - 1.4G >>of memory is now down to 1.1 - 1.2, and swap is only lightly touched at >>181mb. >> >> > >Again, mine is only a workstation, so I don't know how this applies to >you. My max on the previous session was 64k into swap. That was about 4 >days up, IIRC and I tried at several points to dupe the conditions >(opened several browsers, multiple users, several different >type/instances of MUAs, several ssh to my LAN server, etc.). > >I've since turned sendmail back on so I can do some LAN-internal things >with it. Pretty much stock config except that I removed the restriction >on localhost (a DAEMON_OPTION in the sendmail.mc file). Needed to reboot >to to test LVM config changes (new stuff for me) and after a day and a >half of running, 0k in swap with medium load. > > > >>Don't know if this is due to the kernal update or what, but it >>would seem logical that it is, since I see different behavior than >>previously. I've not turned off readahead or readahead_early yet, but >>will do so shortly and see if I can tell any difference in model run >>times which did increase after the kernel update. One thing at a time I >>guess :-) >> >> > >Theoretically, there ought to be a decrease in startup times at certain >points _early_in_the_uptime_cycle. IMO, after a "steady state" typical >loading is achieved (hours, day, weeks??) there should be no or reduced >improvement (maybe decreased too *if* this forces some spurious swap >activity?). > >*If* your config is anything similar to mine (or any generic?), I doubt >you'll find any long-term gain significant enough to warrant even the >near-zero maintenance of two more scripts and associated files. > >It's the old "It doesn't cost me anything, but I get no benefit either" >routine. I almost always opt for excision of the wart. Sometimes that >costs later, but that's OK by me. > > > > Just before the current model run started, I turned off the readahead and readahead_early, and see a considerable decrease in used memory, down from 1.2G to about 975 +/-. Unfortunately, the model did not initialize on time, and I had to bring it up manualy after some input files were not available, but I can tell by runtime if there has been any improvement. Normal runtime is about 3.75 hours, and *any* reduction in runtime would be great. This machine is set up as a workstation, with X and the whole nine yards going, but there are no entertainment things used, nor word processing, etc. The only mail is what I get from the system too, however sendmail is alive and active. I do have things set if my primary mail machine goes down, I can enable Evolution on it with a mouse click. There are no other users except for an ocassional login from a friend who assists in some of the software running that I am unfamilar with at this point. I do see some processes that could probably be turned off, but as long as I don't start hitting swap and thrashing disks, there probably would be no benefit in real terms to stop these services, and some, I'm not sure I fully understand what all is taking place either. Currently 150 processes and a load aveage of 2.32, 2.10, and 2.04 give or take a little. We'll see what happens this afternoon when the model completes. I'm hoping for good results. -- Sam W.Drinkard -- sam at wa4phy.net http://wa4phy.net Augusta Area Mesonet cell 706.825.8513 Home 706.868.7253 MAIL 4428 Branchwood Drive, Martinez Georgia, 30907-1304