End user RAM usage survey

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Thu, May 21, 2015 1:19 pm, grarpamp wrote:
> Posting the "real memory" and the header lines from top would be
> useful for other users to see, along with the verbal descriptions.
> I suggested "using" because many users have far more physical memory
> installed than they will ever need. Thus quoting only the amount
> of installed memory doesn't provide much realworld usage insight
> for users.
>
> Here's a snapshot of a browsing and general user platform that
> includes both memory installed and in use. X, Mozilla and ZFS are
> the big consumers. Were ZFS switched to UFS, headroom does not
> really exist to permit distribute the RAM (1GB sticks) to other
> machines. And if they wanted to run VM it may estimate them to add
> up to 2GB/VM more.
>
> # grep "real mem" /var/run/dmesg.boot
> real memory  = 2147483648 (2048 MB)
>
> # top
> 54 processes:  2 running, 51 sleeping, 1 waiting
> Mem: 479M Active, 90M Inact, 641M Wired, 344K Cache, 112M Buf, 779M Free
> ARC: 328M Total, 138M MFU, 174M MRU, 16K Anon, 3012K Header, 13M Other
> Swap:
>
> (Swap is disabled so that field shows blank.)
>
> (FreeBSD itself does not *require* swap.

Thanks! I guess, I didn't read the book carefully enough... The very next
thing I'll do will be: disable swap on all large RAM boxes (even though it
is merely default 4GB the installer will set for you).

Valeri

> Swap is only required if
> your usage would exceed physical RAM and you wish to avoid process
> killing / crash.)


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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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