On Thu, 2007-02-08 at 22:33 -0500, hkclark at gmail.com wrote: > I'm helping some folks who have a CentOS 3 i386 server with 512MB of > RAM. The output of 'free' looks like: > > $ free > total used free shared buffers cached > Mem: 511428 497956 13472 0 29868 178280 > -/+ buffers/cache: 289808 221620 > Swap: 2040244 120644 1919600 > > The box does not even have X installed... it's basically a web > application and email server. They would like to upgrade to CentOS 4, > but are concerned that it could be considerably more "memory hungry" > and lead to memory starvation (they don't want to add more RAM to the > box at this time, although that could be an option down the road). > > I ran some tests under VMWare with fresh installations of CentOS 3 and > CentOS 4 (both using a "minimal install", the same as the server in > question) and CentOS 4 seemed to only use 10-25MB more memory. > However, it's hard to know how this will translate into real-world > performance over time and with the application installed. > > Does anyone have any experience that would suggest how much more > memory a non-X server like this might require? If the application(s) > on the server stay the same, do you think we would run into issues > where memory would be depleted to a level that would cause concern? --- I wouldn't think so, this system actually does have some x-stuff installed. # cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 4.4 (Final) # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 515604 509760 5844 0 37832 117296 -/+ buffers/cache: 354632 160972 Swap: 1048568 268324 780244 It's running httpd/php5/mysql-4/postfix/amavisd-new/ejabberd/ntp/cupsd/apcupsd (slave) Craig