linux-kernel - Re: VM - a plenty of inactive memory

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Message-ID: <cf40c6a90804090657j7e76a84foeaf3c1c02d2a7b73@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Wed, 9 Apr 2008 15:57:48 +0200
From:	"Andreas Grimm" <agrimm61@...il.com>
To:	"Johannes Weiner" <hannes@...urebad.de>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: VM - a plenty of inactive memory

Hi Johannes,

i know this. But why the kernel locks that memory for a so long time
(2 days now)? Is there a way to enforce the reclaiming? And how can i
find out, which process owns that memory. The problem is, that i can't
accept, that the free memory fell down to 50MB, when i have 24GB in
the nirvana. The system was recently very close to the awkward
situation to swap to disk, and i bet it will do so in the next few
days, because it happened before. Unintelligible, if one got that much
ram.

Bye, Andreas


2008/4/9, Johannes Weiner <hannes@...urebad.de>:
> Hi,
>
>
>  "Andreas Grimm" <agrimm61@...il.com> writes:
>
>  > Hello everybody,
>  >
>  > i got a weird problem with one of my servers. It's a Intel SR2500AL
>  > with 32GB of RAM.
>  > Looking at the memory usage of the system, something is going totally
>  > wrong. The crucial numbers from /proc/meminfo are:
>  >
>  > MemTotal: 33265916 kB
>  > MemFree: 416168 kB
>  > Inactive: 24630428 kB (24GB? whooaaa)
>  >
>  > Another system with only 16GB, same amount of users and load, shows a
>  > more normal behaviour:
>  >
>  > MemTotal: 16619808 kB
>  > MemFree: 6912676 kB
>  > Inactive: 1774364 kB
>  >
>  > Why does the 32GB-System have this plenty of inactive memory. Is there
>  > a way to find out, what the kernel is holding in readiness (that's the
>  > definition of inactive memory afaik)?
>
>
> Inactive pages are marked in use but haven't been touched for some time.
>  These are candidates for memory reclaiming.
>
>  If nothing memory consuming happens, the kswapd should reclaim them back
>  eventually.
>
>         Hannes
>
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