Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262309AbVCITFd (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Mar 2005 14:05:33 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262237AbVCITD0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Mar 2005 14:03:26 -0500 Received: from e2.ny.us.ibm.com ([32.97.182.142]:30607 "EHLO e2.ny.us.ibm.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262190AbVCIS7i (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Mar 2005 13:59:38 -0500 Subject: inode cache, dentry cache, buffer heads usage From: Badari Pulavarty To: ext2-devel , Linux Kernel Mailing List Content-Type: text/plain Organization: Message-Id: <1110394558.24286.203.camel@dyn318077bld.beaverton.ibm.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.2 (1.2.2-5) Date: 09 Mar 2005 10:55:58 -0800 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1999 Lines: 65 Hi, We have a 8-way P-III, 16GB RAM running 2.6.8-1. We use this as our server to keep source code, cscopes and do the builds. This machine seems to slow down over the time. One thing we keep noticing is it keeps running out of lowmem. Most of the lowmem is used for ext3 inode cache + dentry cache + bufferheads + Buffers. So we did 2:2 split - but it improved thing, but again run into same issues. So, why is these slab cache are not getting purged/shrinked even under memory pressure ? (I have seen lowmem as low as 6MB). What can I do to keep the machine healthy ? Thanks, Badari Meminfo: ======== $ cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 16377076 kB MemFree: 9400604 kB Buffers: 577368 kB Cached: 4002012 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 2152196 kB Inactive: 3578624 kB HighTotal: 14548952 kB HighFree: 9387328 kB LowTotal: 1828124 kB LowFree: 13276 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB SwapFree: 0 kB Dirty: 0 kB Writeback: 0 kB Mapped: 301432 kB Slab: 1227268 kB Committed_AS: 695920 kB PageTables: 5684 kB VmallocTotal: 114680 kB VmallocUsed: 312 kB VmallocChunk: 114368 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB Slabinfo (top users): ===================== ext3_inode_cache 1405201 1615312 480 8 1 : tunables 54 27 8 : slabdata 201914 201914 0 dentry_cache 1505485 1864917 144 27 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : slabdata 69071 69071 0 buffer_head 1099832 1755375 52 75 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : slabdata 23405 23405 0 radix_tree_node 99919 102522 276 14 1 : tunables 54 27 8 : slabdata 7323 7323 0 - 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/