On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 17:34 +1100, CaT wrote: > Not sure where to begin so here goes anway. Today I did an rsync backup > of a server with 2million+ files. Before doing so the used memory on the > server this was initiated from was under 200meg (excluding buffers and > cache). During the rsync the memory used grew to just shy of 1.6gig and > now, about 2 hours after the rsync has well and truly finished, the used > memory is at 1.23gig. This is what free reports: > > total used free shared buffers cached > Mem: 2058128 1994468 63660 0 688604 11432 > -/+ buffers/cache: 1294432 763696 > Swap: 1048568 0 1048568 > > There are 75 processes on the box of which almost 47 are kernel > processes + init. Of the rest, the top 3 have an RSS of 9.4meg, 6.2meg > and 4.8meg, 7 are at around 2meg and the rest are below 2meg with the > majority below 1. So unless I'm misunderstanding something, processess > alone do not account for the amount of used memory. > > The destination of the rsync was an ext3 filesystem over raid5 over ahci > sata. > > I've included /proc/meminfo, /proc/slabinfo and config.gz. If there's > anything else please shout.
How much memory does: echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches gain you? > ext3_inode_cache 1235577 1240565 768 5 1 : tunables 54 27 8 > : slabdata 248113 248113 0 > dentry 703661 749797 200 19 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : > slabdata 39463 39463 0 > buffer_head 174535 209087 104 37 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : > slabdata 5651 5651 0 would get freed by doing that. this one: > size-64 537590 850249 64 59 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : > slabdata 14411 14411 0 I'm unsure about, if that one sticks around that'd be something to worry about. See if you can monitor this value and try to determine: - if it ever drops - what makes it grow (fastest) I guess we could stick some instrumentation in there to track that bucket. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
