[mythtv-users] A few 0.19 and RAM questions

[Phill Wiggin]

Andrew Ingram wrote:

>>On 2/6/06, Mark Hetherington <redcane at dodo.com.au> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I'm not an expert on this, so this is mostly a matter of what I 
>>>believe to be true, but perhaps is not particularly accurate.
>>>I think no matter how much RAM you have, linux will still use some 
>>>swap. I think it's partly so it can have stuff already swapped out, 
>>>even if it is in RAM as well, so it doesn't take as long to 
>>>      
>>>
>>swap when 
>>    
>>
>>>needed. I'm fairly certain 512Mb is sufficient unless your 
>>>      
>>>
>>looking at multiple encoders.
>>
>>    
>>
I doubt linux itself is the culprit.  Here are some top output from my 
systems (all are Gentoo, running a mix of kernels and architectures):

Laptop (1GB):
top - 12:49:54 up  3:02,  2 users,  load average: 0.13, 0.11, 0.03
Tasks:  62 total,   1 running,  61 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  4.6% us,  0.9% sy,  1.3% ni, 90.0% id,  2.7% wa,  0.2% hi,  0.2% si
Mem:   1034812k total,   960812k used,    74000k free,   305816k buffers
Swap:   257000k total,        0k used,   257000k free,   128744k cached

My webserver (256M):
top - 12:59:34 up 103 days, 20:28,  1 user,  load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01
Tasks:  52 total,   1 running,  51 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.2% us,  0.1% sy,  0.0% ni, 99.5% id,  0.1% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    223516k total,   205420k used,    18096k free,     9544k buffers
Swap:   506036k total,    90680k used,   415356k free,    65508k cached

My pvr backend (512M - 16M Shared video):
top - 12:51:53 up 10 days, 19:16,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks:  82 total,   3 running,  79 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.1% us,  0.3% sy,  0.4% ni, 97.2% id,  1.6% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.1% si
Mem:    498832k total,   415764k used,    83068k free,    83332k buffers
Swap:   257032k total,      228k used,   256804k free,    94424k cached

My fileserver (128M):
top - 13:55:24 up 5 days, 18:33,  3 users,  load average: 0.15, 0.03, 0.01
Tasks:  51 total,   1 running,  50 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.3% us,  0.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 99.7% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    125720k total,    84568k used,    41152k free,    31844k buffers
Swap:   250480k total,      348k used,   250132k free,    22200k cached

And my PVR frontend (256M)
top - 12:43:42 up 4 days, 17:13,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks:  51 total,   1 running,  50 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.3% us,  0.1% sy,  0.0% ni, 96.9% id,  0.2% wa,  0.4% hi,  0.1% si
Mem:    255316k total,   251132k used,     4184k free,    70216k buffers
Swap:   977248k total,        0k used,   977248k free,    22736k cached

My webserver uses the most, but it could use some more RAM.  My laptop 
(1GB) and my PVR frontend(265M) use no swap, whereas my Backend and my 
fileserver use a very small (<1MB) of swap.

I'd guess the perpetrators are the age old "too many processes, need to 
swap some out" ones.  Maybe the ones still in swap haven't been 
reactivated, so they're hanging around until they are called on.

Anyway, I've got 2 machines that use no swap, 2 that use very little, 
and 1 that uses a good bit.

--Phill W.