SUMMARY: How to check phys-memory needs?

From: Bernt Christandl <beb_at_mpe.mpg.de>
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 11:29:42 +0200

Hello managers,

i've asked:
> i have some physical memory in my digital machine (alphaserver) under
> digital unix-4.0b and with "top" or "monitor" i can see some values
> for phys and virtual mem, for active, inactive, wired and free memory...
>
> But do these number reflect only phys mem or also my swapspace on disk?
>
> And what does that tell me? How could i see, that my machine needs more
> phys memory? (Or has more than enough?) How could i see, that i could raise
> (or should lower) my ubc_bufcache because of enough/less free memory? Or
> should i first deal with swapsize on disk???
>
> And last but not least: Is there a (good) documentation on these themes
> somewhere? (The manpages on all those *stat commands are aweful!)

and i got three answers:

"Pam Woods, Systems Manager" <axsymgr_at_UAA.ALASKA.EDU>
suggested to use pmgr (performance manager)

 -> and i'm very impressed about the moving horse and all those wonderful
    buttons and icons and optical toys...
    but it doesn't help me very much with my understanding of memory
    consumption...


"Carlos Dagnino M" <carlos.dagnino_at_consorcio.cl>
gave me a detailed answer with examples and hints (i don't have the most
recent version of SYSTEM TUNNING AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT manual, but
the one i have from du-3.2 days i find not very helpful/impressive, so
it's not very likely that i will convince my boss to buy the actual version)

and he pointed me to the vmubc-utility from the freeware disk.
Sorry, i didn't had time to look for that until now, but sure i will try that!


and last but not least alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com gave me another
detailed answer on all those cryptic (at least to me) things like
active/inactive/wired/unused/... memory counters which are described in the
vmstat(1) manual page (which i don't *really* understand)


Thank you all very much and forgive my ignorance (which is still very big!)

Bernt
                                                                       
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Bernt Christandl / Max Planck Institut - Extraterrestrische Physik -
- D-85740 Garching / Phone: +49/89/3299-3342 / Fax: +49/89/3299-3569 -
- email: beb_at_mpe.mpg.de -
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Received on Wed Oct 08 1997 - 11:49:16 NZDT

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