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On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 03:47:27PM -0400, Doug wrote: > Hello: > > I work on a big machine at work. Here is the command top: > > > top - 15:36:46 up 80 days, 3:14, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 > Tasks: 89 total, 2 running, 87 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie > Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0 > Mem: 16440256k total, 16280920k used, 159336k free, 67484k buffers > Swap: 7807580k total, 83564k used, 7724016k free, 15646216k cached > > PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND > 1 root 15 0 5076 152 68 S 0 0.0 0:02.49 init > 2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 migration/0 > 3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.66 ksoftirqd/0 > 4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 > 5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/1 > > Lots of sleeping is happening. Nothing has been going on for a while > (load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00) One thing I found curious is the > line started Mem: there still is a large value under used. I can see > that some swap was used (when, I do not know). I guess the rational > explanation is that nearly all of this is cache memory. I guess linux > as an OS is passive about tossing this stuff away. It is hard to take > the Mem: line as a warning marker if it remains so high when times are > calm. Can I/should I do anything? 15646216k cached That's what most of your RAM is doing right now. It's disk cache. And it's probably all in sync with the disk, since it's been so long since anything interesting happened on the system. I would diagnose this machine as underutilized. There is absolutely nothing to worry about right now. The kernel will discard clean disk cache space in favor of running applications as soon as that's needed. It's normal to have a small amount of swap being used, too -- that's stuff which the kernel thinks is quite likely to never be called up at all. If you're concerned about eventual performance, install systat/sar and learn to read the reports that generates. -dsr- -- http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference. You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.
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