From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 1 15:43:51 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3589D106566B for ; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 15:43:51 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from email1.allantgroup.com (email1.emsphone.com [199.67.51.115]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EDC138FC08 for ; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 15:43:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by email1.allantgroup.com (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id n91FhlrO013957 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 10:43:47 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (smmsp@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n91FhliE038159 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 10:43:47 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) id n91FhjPp038158; Thu, 1 Oct 2009 10:43:46 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 10:43:45 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Bill Moran Message-ID: <20091001154345.GN29215@dan.emsphone.com> References: <176FD00A-5791-4D3E-B7F3-D5F0A0AE2037@todoo.biz> <20091001073919.9e05d056.wmoran@potentialtech.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20091001073919.9e05d056.wmoran@potentialtech.com> X-OS: FreeBSD 7.2-STABLE User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.94.1, clamav-milter version 0.94.1 on email1.allantgroup.com X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.0.2 (email1.allantgroup.com [199.67.51.78]); Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:43:47 -0500 (CDT) X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.45 Cc: Liste FreeBSD Subject: Re: Swap and memory optimization X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:43:51 -0000 In the last episode (Oct 01), Bill Moran said: > bsd wrote: > > I have a FBSD 6.4p7 box that I use as a mail server - 1Go RAM - RAID1 > > Works quite well. > > > > As I plan to put 100 more mail accounts soon on the server I was > > wondering if the memory & swap was ok on the server considering these > > figures: > > > > last pid: 18956; load averages: 0.04, 0.11, 0.05 up 19+08:36:23 09:53:38 > > 125 processes: 1 running, 124 sleeping > > CPU: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 1.5% system, 0.4% interrupt, 98.1% idle > > Mem: 499M Active, 70M Inact, 362M Wired, 41M Cache, 111M Buf, 20M Free > > Swap: 2000M Total, 160M Used, 1840M Free, 8% Inuse > > > > Though It looks good to me - the server swaps a bit (between 8 to 14%) > > and there is not much memory left. > > Looks like the server would run more smoothly with a bit more RAM. At > least an additional 256M, I would think, but considering the price of RAM, > you might as well just up it to 2G. The amount of used swap is much less important than whether you are actively swapping (if there are In/Out values on the Swap line in top, or if "vmstat 1" shows nonzero values in the pi/po columns). 160MB of used swap is fine if it's just unused daemons (getty, idle webserver, etc). More memory can never hurt, but it doesn't seem like it's urgently needed here. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com