SUMMARY: memory problems

From: Martina Hofmann <mhofmann_at_ew.tu-darmstadt.de>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 19:16:12 +0111

Many thanks to

Dr. Tom Blinn
alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com
Joe Fletcher
Ed Murphy

The real problem is that I simply need more memory for those
memoryintensive FE solvers.

But there were also some other very useful hints:

- A virtual memory problem in DU 4.0D could be fixed with the patch
vm_perform_v40dbl11.

- There is no way to "reserve" some of the memory for the X Window
System. A solution would be tu run the solver on a different system.

- Very handy is the sys_check utility from the DEC ftp site
ftp.digital.com:/pub/DEC/IAS/sys_check.
 
I ran that and was very surprised how badly configured my system is.
Perhaps, some new kernel parameters would help me in some way, but I
think I really need to buy more memory.
I also tried to download the patch, but since the server was a little
bit overloaded, I havent succeeded yet.

Thanks again

Martina






My DEC Alpha station with DU 4.0D and 512MB memory has some memory
problems. When I am running a finite element solver which occupies a
lot of memory, it appears that I cannot work in the dtterm windows
because it takes up to minutes to get a command working. In this case
the workstation makes a lot of noise (perhaps it is paging, but I
dont really know what it does). The system information tells me that
there is 0% free memory but 46% available swap. I think the process
is taking all the memory it gets and doesnt leave enough for X. The
problem is that I want to work with a viewer of my FE program while
it is solving some jobs.

My question is:
- Where could I define the amount of memory which has to be reserved
for the X windows ?

I have printed some information. Hope this helps.
ewalpha:~ $vmstat -s
Virtual Memory Statistics: (pagesize = 8192)
     18049 active pages
     34934 inactive pages
       478 free pages
      4744 wired pages
  12096914 virtual memory page faults
    491731 copy-on-write page faults
   4424027 zero fill page faults
  11282392 reattaches from reclaim list
   3079207 pages paged in
    437047 pages paged out
 606600313 task and thread context switches
  30462748 device interrupts
 944812585 system calls

---------------------------------------------------
Dipl.-Ing. Martina Hofmann
Institut fuer Elektrische Energiewandlung
Landgraf-Georg-Strasse 4
64283 Darmstadt
Tel.: 06151-16-4294, Fax: 06151-16-6033
email: mhofmann_at_ew.tu-darmstadt.de
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Received on Tue Mar 30 1999 - 18:15:09 NZST

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