Strange memory occupation - some more details

From: Michel-Ange CAMHI <camhi_at_eclia2.ec-lille.fr>
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 20:17:09 +0200

Summary of the last episodes :
* AlphaStation 4/166 with DU3.2c, 64 Mo RAM, 5Gb HD, 384 Mo swap.
* Real memory could never exceed 29 M over 59 M avail
* Virtual memory could never exceed 80M over 384 M avail
* When virtual mem reaches 70 M approx., machine begins to slow down, 74M -> the machine is on its knees (system calls approx. 15%) , 80 M -> even the console shell is unbearably slow and system calls go to 30% or something.

I was asked to monitor the paging file with vmstat :
vmstat -s
Virtual Memory Statistics: (pagesize = 8192)
      1621 active pages
      3165 inactive pages
        36 free pages
      1813 wired pages
  13181083 virtual memory page faults
    893093 copy-on-write page faults
   6161428 zero fill page faults
  41032312 reattaches from reclaim list
   5013174 pages paged in
   1556140 pages paged out
  94924218 task and thread context switches
  69935520 device interrupts
 160583660 system calls

all of this in 4 days (since last reboot).
The number of virtual memory page faults particularly worries me.

Any interpretation?

----
Michel-Ange CAMHI                       Eleve-Ingenieur ECLille _ Promo 98 (G3)
Res. VINCI, Appt B207                |                 email: camhi_at_ec-lille.fr
59 650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ             |         http://www2.ec-lille.fr/~lemac
Tél.: 03 20 91 41 43 (repondeur)     |            talk: camhi_at_lb207.ec-lille.fr
Received on Sun Sep 07 1997 - 20:29:45 NZST

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