Re: Free memory usage Sol10, 8.2.9 - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Ivan Voras
Subject Re: Free memory usage Sol10, 8.2.9
Date
Msg-id hcrld7$4r1$1@ger.gmane.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Free memory usage Sol10, 8.2.9  (Jeremy Harris <jgh@wizmail.org>)
List pgsql-performance
Jeremy Harris wrote:
> On 11/03/2009 07:16 PM, Subbiah Stalin-XCGF84 wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> I'm trying to understand the free memory usage and why it falls below
>> 17G sometimes and what could be causing it. Any pointers would be
>> appreciated.
>>
>> root@prod1 # prtconf
>> System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  sun4u
>> Memory size: 32768 Megabytes
>>
>> [postgres@prod1 ~]$ vmstat 5 10
>>   kthr      memory            page            disk          faults
>> cpu
>>   r b w   swap  free  re  mf pi po fr de sr 1m 1m 1m m1   in   sy   cs us
>> sy id
>>   0 0 0 51713480 21130304 58 185 325 104 104 0 0 23 3 7 1 488 604  573  1
>> 2 97
>>   0 0 0 51048768 18523456 6 10 0 192 192 0 0 4  0  3  0  527  753  807  2
>> 1 97
>
> Memory used by the OS for caching files is no longer free.
> Free memory is wasted memory.

To finish the thought: memory used by OS for caching files will be
automatically given to applications that need more memory so it is "kind
of" free memory.

In your case, you really do have 17-18G unused memory which is
practically wasted.

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