Re: Memory Management

From: Márcio Oliveira
Date: Fri Jul 22 2005 - 09:38:45 EST


Neil Horman wrote:

On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 10:40:54AM -0300, Márcio Oliveira wrote:


http://people.redhat.com/nhorman/papers/rhel3_vm.pdf
I wrote this with norm awhile back. It may help you out.
Regards
Neil




Neil,

Thanks.~10-12GB of total RAM (16GB) are

How can Proc virtual memory parameters like inactive_clean_percent, overcommit_memory, overcommit_ratio and page_cache help me to solve / reduce Out Of Memory conditions on servers with 16GB RAM and lots of GB swap?



I wouldn't touch memory overcommit if you are already seeing out of memory
issues. If you are using lots of pagecache, I would suggest increasing
inactive_clean percent, reducing the pagecahce.max value, and modifying the
bdflush parameters in the above document such that bdflush runs sooner, more
often, and does more work per iteration. This will help you move data in
pagecache back to disk more aggressively so that memory will be available for
other purposes, like heap allocations. Also if you're using a Red Hat kernel and
you have 16GB of ram in your system, you're a good candidate for the hugemem
kernel. Rather than a straightforward out of memory condition, you may be
seeing a exhaustion of your kernels address space (check LowFree in
/proc/meminfo). In this even the hugemem kernel will help you in that it
increases your Low Memory address space from 1GB to 4GB, preventing some OOM
conditions.




Kernel does not free cached memory (~10-12GB of total RAM - 16GB). Is there some way to force the kernel to free cached memory?



Cached memory is freed on demand. Just because its listed under the cached line
below doesn't mean it can't be freed and used for another purpose. Implement
the tunings above, and your situation should improve.

Regards
Neil



/proc/meminfo:

total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 16603488256 16523333632 80154624 0 70651904 13194563584
Swap: 17174257664 11771904 17162485760
MemTotal: 16214344 kB
MemFree: 78276 kB
Buffers: 68996 kB
Cached: 12874808 kB

Thanks to all.

Marcio.



Neil,

Thanks for the answers!

The following lines are the Out Of Memory log:

Jul 20 13:45:44 server kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 23716 (oracle).
Jul 20 13:45:44 server kernel: Fixed up OOM kill of mm-less task
Jul 20 13:45:45 server su(pam_unix)[3848]: session closed for user root
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Mem-info:
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Zone:DMA freepages: 1884 min: 0 low: 0 high: 0
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Zone:Normal freepages: 1084 min: 1279 low: 4544 high: 6304
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Zone:HighMem freepages:386679 min: 255 low: 61952 high: 92928
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Free pages: 389647 (386679 HighMem)
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: ( Active: 2259787/488777, inactive_laundry: 244282, inactive_clean: 244366, free: 389647 )
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: aa:0 ac:0 id:0 il:0 ic:0 fr:1884
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: aa:1620 ac:1801 id:231 il:15 ic:0 fr:1085
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: aa:1099230 ac:1157136 id:488536 il:244277 ic:244366 fr:386679
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: 0*4kB 0*8kB 1*16kB 1*32kB 1*64kB 0*128kB 1*256kB 0*512kB 1*1024kB 1*2048kB 1*4096kB = 7536kB)Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: 55*4kB 9*8kB 19*16kB 9*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 0*512kB 1*1024kB 1*2048kB 0*4096kB = 4340kB)
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: 291229*4kB 46179*8kB 711*16kB 1*32kB 1*64kB 1*128kB 1*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 1546716kB)
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Swap cache: add 192990, delete 189665, find 21145/90719, race 0+0
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: 139345 pages of slabcache
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: 1890 pages of kernel stacks
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: 0 lowmem pagetables, 274854 highmem pagetables
Jul 20 13:45:48 server kernel: Free swap: 16749720kB
Jul 20 13:45:49 server kernel: 4194304 pages of RAM
Jul 20 13:45:49 server kernel: 3899360 pages of HIGHMEM
Jul 20 13:45:49 server kernel: 140718 reserved pages
Jul 20 13:45:49 server kernel: 35350398 pages shared
Jul 20 13:45:49 server kernel: 3325 pages swap cached

/proc/meminfo LowFree info:
LowFree: 17068 kB ------> Do you think this value is too low?

Zone:Normal freepages: 1084 min: 1279 low: 4544 high: 6304 ----> (freepages < min) It's normal?
Zone:HighMem freepages:386679 min: 255 low: 61952 high: 92928 ----> (freepages < min) It's normal?

Thanks a lot Neil!

Márcio Oliveira.


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