Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> writes:
> In this:
> Mem: 16432240k total, 16344596k used, 87644k free, 27548k buffers
> Swap: 10241428k total, 3680860k used, 6560568k free, 6230376k cached
> The 6.2G cached is considered part of the 16G used
> So it's not using more memory than it has. It's just the accounting
> is inobvious.
Right, but it still appears that there's something close to 14G of
actual memory use (exclusive of kernel disk buffers). If that's
the true requirement of the set of processes being run, 16G of RAM
is pretty darn marginal, and he should go buy more. But first it
would be prudent to find out where the memory is going. Also, one
thing I'd do immediately is to watch "vmstat 1" for awhile to see if
there's a lot of swap activity. If that's where the I/O is going,
it'd be another signal that memory pressure is the real issue.
regards, tom lane
