On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 23:58:06 +0100, Derek wrote: >On Wednesday 02 Jun 2004 22:37, brian wrote: >snip >> So most of those I understand, but anyone know what the numeric >> entries represent? >> >> Second question - 9.1 ran just fine on this PC (600 MHz PIII, 512 MB >> of memory) but once I'd installed 10.0 I noticed a lot of disk >> thrashing going on. I ran up KDE system guard (I"m using the version >> of KDE which came with 10.0, and that's the only desktop I've >> installed) to find that I'd only got a couple of megs of memory free, >> which explains the thrashing, > >Linux uses all unused memory as a disc cache. It is perfectly normal for >memory usage to be 100% After all unused memory is 'wasted' memory. >
Hmm. And a hard disk which is being *constantly* accessed is a hard disk that is likely to have a short lifespan - assuming you're not running server-class drives, which I'm not on my Linux box. I wouldn't have noticed the memory usage had it not been for the disk thrashing. >> As far as servers that I've installed are concerned, I have MySQL, >> ProFTP and Apache (that I'm aware of). I've also got Kylix on the PC, >> but that doesn't have anything sitting in the background until you >> actually run it. Anyway, what puzzles me is that I've got six copies >> of httpd2, one with a login of root and five with a login of apache, > >Perfectly normal. That is how more than 1 person at a time can hit your web >site. > OK, that's cleared that one up. >> six copies of mingetty, >Hit Ctl+Atl+F1 through to F6 and you will see text consoles. These are the >instances of mingetty. You could run fewer, but it would save virtually no >resources. Any idle process eventually gets swapped out to swap and consumes >insignificant resource. > OK. >> five of saslauthd, >Perfectly normal assuming you are actually using SASL (Possibly for email >authentication) > Not to my knowledge - unless it's by default. >> and a couple of other >> programs which show two or three instances. Can anyone tell me >> whether the footprint of 10.0 with KDE really is this large, or has >> something gone wrong with the update process? > >No its all normal. Do not worry about it. I'm worried about any system that shows constant disk access while "idle". >If there are services you have installed but do not use, then by all means >turn them off or uninstall them. The only service I would recommend disabling >is tmdns (Tiny DNS server) which is more trouble than it is worth and screws >up lots of peoples net connection. > The net connection, at least, is working just fine. > >> As above, don't underestimate my ignorance of Linux. I used to write >> Fortran programs under some variant of Unix 25 years ago, and that's >> about the extent of my knowledge of Unix/Linux systems. Since then >> all my PC work has been with Billy G's offerings. At the moment, I >> know about enough of Mandrake to navigate round the file system and >> to fire up Kylix. > >Just enough knowledge to be dangerous ;-) Not really - the dangerous ones are those who know nothing but think they know something. I know the dangers of learning a new operating system from scratch, I've been through it too many times. :-( Some have been Unix-like, e.g. Hewlett-Packard's RTE-6 and RTE-A, but it's all buried by time under a mountain of Windows and VAX/VMS. >Someone on this list used to have a good signature :- >If your Linux system is not broken, you are not trying hard enough! > >Have fun > No guarantees. ;-) I've really not that much interest in hacking around in the depths of the system, all I'm after is to learn enough to develop the same sort of software under Linux as I currently do under Windows. Had it not been for Borland's Kylix, I'd not even bother looking at Linux. In any case, I just don't like an OS that tries to beat hard drives into an early grave. Thanks for the info, but I'm still not convinced. If this constant disk access really is normal for a Linux system, I'm going to buy shares in some hard drive manufacturers! Brian.
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