Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:06:22 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:06:13 -0500 Received: from zeus.kernel.org ([209.10.41.242]:24000 "EHLO zeus.kernel.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:05:55 -0500 Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 11:01:52 -0600 (CST) From: Josh Grebe To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Question about memory usage in 2.4 vs 2.2 In-Reply-To: <200103190207.UAA13397@senechalle.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Greetings, I have a server farm made of identical hardware running pop3 and imap mail functions. recently, we upgraded all the machines to kernel 2.4.2, but we noticed that according to free, our memory utilization went way up. Here is the output of free on the 2.4.2 machine: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 513192 492772 20420 0 1684 263188 -/+ buffers/cache: 227900 285292 Swap: 819304 540 818764 On the 2.2..18 machine: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 517256 351280 165976 19920 82820 186836 -/+ buffers/cache: 81624 435632 Swap: 819304 0 819304 Doing the math, the 2.4 machine is using 44% of available memory, while the 2.2 is using only about 14%. Here are the contents of /proc/meminfo on 2.4: total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: Mem: 525508608 517480448 8028160 0 1138688 282091520 Swap: 838967296 552960 838414336 MemTotal: 513192 kB MemFree: 7840 kB MemShared: 0 kB Buffers: 1112 kB Cached: 275480 kB Active: 254876 kB Inact_dirty: 18880 kB Inact_clean: 2836 kB Inact_target: 48 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 513192 kB LowFree: 7840 kB SwapTotal: 819304 kB SwapFree: 818764 kB on 2.2: total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: Mem: 529670144 366837760 162832384 22945792 84807680 194367488 Swap: 838967296 0 838967296 MemTotal: 517256 kB MemFree: 159016 kB MemShared: 22408 kB Buffers: 82820 kB Cached: 189812 kB SwapTotal: 819304 kB SwapFree: 819304 kB These machines are dual P2-400's, with 512M ECC ram, adaptec 2940, and dual intel etherexpress pro 100 cards. I also tried 2.4.2-ac20 with similar results. Am I missing something here? I'd really like to move the farm back up to 2.4 series. Thanks, Josh --- Josh Grebe Senior Unix Systems Administrator Primary Network, an MPower Company http://www.primary.net - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/