[Preston] Excessive memory usage

Tarball tarball at lycos.co.uk
Wed Jan 5 07:49:22 GMT 2005


I have a file server running a few services (samba, nfs, sshd) but no X, 
everything is done from the console. However, even when the only thing I have 
done is boot the machine it seems to consume nearly all memory.

I know Linux uses a much memory a possible to cache stuff but this is straight 
after booting so nothing has had chance to be cached, also if you look at the 
output of 'free' you can see that there is only 10MB of stuff cached.

100MB of used memory seems excessive for a machine not running X (my desktop 
machine is using about 30MB of RAM after I reboot but before I start X.  This 
machine also runs SSHD, nfs, samba)

The system is a Dual Celeron 566, 128MB RAM, 256MB Swap, about 500GB disk 
space.


{chaos} /home/jrt% uname -a
Linux chaos 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 #1 SMP Sat Oct 23 14:39:48 GMT 2004 i686 Celeron 
(Mendocino) GenuineIntel GNU/Linux


Is there anything glaringly obvious I'm missing???



{chaos} /home/jrt% free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        126740     124820       1920          0      10364      10104
-/+ buffers/cache:     104352      22388
Swap:       248996          0     248996


{chaos} /home/jrt% ps aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.3  1380  500 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 init [3]
root         2  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [migration/0]
root         3  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SN   Dec14   0:01 [ksoftirqd/0]
root         4  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [migration/1]
root         5  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SN   Dec14   0:01 [ksoftirqd/1]
root         6  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [events/0]
root         7  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [events/1]
root         8  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [khelper]
root         9  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [kblockd/0]
root        10  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [kblockd/1]
root        33  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [pdflush]
root        32  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [kirqd]
root        34  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [pdflush]
root        36  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [aio/0]
root        35  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:54 [kswapd0]
root        37  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S<   Dec14   0:00 [aio/1]
root       620  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [kseriod]
root       641  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [kjournald]
root       724  0.0  0.2  1356  368 ?        S<s  Dec14   0:00 udevd
root      5178  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [kjournald]
root      5179  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [kjournald]
root      5180  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [kjournald]
root      5183  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [khubd]
bin       6493  0.0  0.5  1572  656 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 /sbin/portmap
nobody    6547  0.0  0.5  1540  732 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 /sbin/rpc.statd
root      6564  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6563  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6562  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6557  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6558  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6559  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6560  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6561  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [nfsd]
root      6567  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [lockd]
root      6568  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 [rpciod]
root      6569  0.0  0.5  1588  676 ?        Ss   Dec14   
0:00 /usr/sbin/rpc.mountd
root      6677  0.0  2.0  8180 2540 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd 
-D
root      6680  0.0  1.9  8180 2532 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd 
-D
root      6681  0.0  1.5  6000 1992 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:27 /usr/sbin/nmbd 
-D
root      6733  0.0  1.2  3984 1580 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root      6807  0.0  0.4  1500  624 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 metalog 
[MASTER]
root      6808  0.0  0.3  1464  504 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 metalog 
[KERNEL]
root      6818  0.0  0.5  1568  660 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
root      6871  0.0  0.6  2032  860 ?        Ss   Dec14   
0:00 /usr/sbin/xinetd -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid -
root      6886  0.0  0.4  1412  572 tty1     Ss+  Dec14   0:00 /sbin/agetty 
38400 tty1 linux
root      6887  0.0  0.4  1412  572 ttyS0    Ss+  Dec14   0:00 /sbin/agetty 
19200 9600 4800 ttyS0
root      6888  0.0  1.5  6604 1928 ?        Ss   Dec14   0:00 sshd: jrt 
[priv]
jrt       6891  0.0  1.6  6808 2084 ?        S    Dec14   0:00 sshd: jrt at pts/0
jrt       6892  0.0  1.3  2828 1736 pts/0    Ss+  Dec14   0:00 -tcsh
root     17752  0.2  1.5  6604 1928 ?        Ss   00:31   0:00 sshd: jrt 
[priv]
jrt      17755  0.4  1.6  6808 2084 ?        R    00:31   0:00 sshd: jrt at pts/1
jrt      17756  0.7  1.4  2892 1784 pts/1    Ss   00:31   0:00 -tcsh
jrt      17777  0.0  0.6  2364  824 pts/1    R+   00:31   0:00 ps aux 



More information about the Preston mailing list