From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 8 20:50:02 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E61E6106564A for ; Wed, 8 Feb 2012 20:50:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from qmta11.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net (qmta11.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net [76.96.27.211]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C30FB8FC15 for ; Wed, 8 Feb 2012 20:50:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from omta23.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.30.90]) by qmta11.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id XYH71i0091wfjNsABYq2XB; Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:50:02 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([67.180.84.87]) by omta23.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id XYq01i00q1t3BNj8jYq1K7; Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:50:02 +0000 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id C32BA102C1E; Wed, 8 Feb 2012 12:50:00 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 12:50:00 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Andriy Gapon Message-ID: <20120208205000.GA25700@icarus.home.lan> References: <4F30E284.8080905@norma.perm.ru> <4F310115.3070507@FreeBSD.org> <4F310C5A.6070400@norma.perm.ru> <4F310E75.7090301@FreeBSD.org> <4F3144A9.2000505@norma.perm.ru> <4F314892.50806@FreeBSD.org> <4F314B5B.100@norma.perm.ru> <4F3186C6.8000904@FreeBSD.org> <4F324F10.2060508@norma.perm.ru> <4F32DB30.6020600@FreeBSD.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4F32DB30.6020600@FreeBSD.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Cc: "Eugene M. Zheganin" , freebsd-stable Subject: Re: zfs arc and amount of wired memory X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:50:03 -0000 On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 10:29:36PM +0200, Andriy Gapon wrote: > on 08/02/2012 12:31 Eugene M. Zheganin said the following: > > Hi. > > > > On 08.02.2012 02:17, Andriy Gapon wrote: > >> [output snipped] > >> > >> Thank you. I don't see anything suspicious/unusual there. > >> Just case, do you have ZFS dedup enabled by a chance? > >> > >> I think that examination of vmstat -m and vmstat -z outputs may provide some > >> clues as to what got all that memory wired. > >> > > Nope, I don't have deduplication feature enabled. > > OK. So, did you have a chance to inspect vmstat -m and vmstat -z? Andriy, Politely -- recommending this to a user is a good choice of action, but the problem is that no user, even an experienced user, is going to know what all of the "Types" (vmstat -m) or "ITEMs" (vmstat -z) correlate with on the system. For example, for vmstat -m, the ITEM name is "solaris". For vmstat -z, the Types are named zio_* but I have a feeling there are more than just that which pertain to ZFS. I'm having to make *assumptions*. The FreeBSD VM is highly complex and is not "easy to understand" even remotely. It becomes more complex when you consider that we use terms like "wired", "active", "inactive", "cache", and "free" -- and none of them, in simple English terms, actually represent the words chosen for what they do. Furthermore, the only definition I've been able to find over the years for how any of these work, what they do/mean, etc. is here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/arch-handbook/vm.html And this piece of documentation is only useful for people who understand VMs (note: it was written by Matt Dillon, for example). It is not useful for end-users trying to track down what within the kernel is actually eating up memory. "vmstat -m" is as best as it's going to get, and like I said, with the ITEM names being borderline ambiguous (depending on what you're looking for -- with VFS and so on it's spread all over the place), this becomes a very tedious task, where the user or admin have to continually ask developers on the mailing lists what it is they're looking at. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, US | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |