Memory usage issue?!

[photek]

Hi

i am new around here
Mint is really nice
I installed it and started to use it daily and it's just awesome.

I have one little problem though

No matter what i tried my system "eats" as much as 230-240 Mb of RAM on clean install.

I tried some performance tweaks (mostly services and HDD tweaks)but no luck
So i am using Celena
I have only Beryl enabled and nothing else.Well... beside the system processes.

Is it normal to take so much RAM?

My machine is a 2600XP+ with 1 Gb of RAM and an AGP Nvida 256Mb

Thank you

[Husse]

as much as 230-240 Mb

Well - that's not much - just about 30 MB
b is bit - B is byte and it matters
but I don't find 240 MB much, and it's roughly what my system is using and the reports I see tell the same
Firefox 50 MB
Thunderbird 27 MB
X 34 MB
tomboy 10 MB
mintUpdate 22 MB (?!)
Python 13 MB (?!)
That's 156 MB
so it takes a bit of memory, but I've never noticed more than about 380 MB used

[scorp123]

No matter what i tried my system "eats" as much as 230-240 Mb of RAM on clean install.

Did you look at the "free" command? Chances are a lot of that memory is used dynamically for disk buffering and not really used up by programs.

Example from my laptop (1 GB RAM):

Code: Select all

 > free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1026132     986648      39484          0     296536     360680
-/+ buffers/cache:     329432     696700
Swap:      1172704          0    1172704

If you just look at the "total" (1026132) vs. "used" (986648) section you could think I am running out of memory: "Oh dear, 986 MB are used ..." BUT: As you can see the section "buffers" and "cached" take a total of 696 MB RAM. So if you deduct that you get how much *really* is used by the OS: just a ridiculous 329 MB RAM (out of 1 GB). Swap isn't being used at all, it's all free.

Chances are your output will be similar and most of the "used" RAM will be in the 'buffers' and 'cached' sections.

[photek]

Thank you for your answers

In fact i feel it's a bit ... sluggish

I hit the menu button and it's ... kinda delayed if you know what i mean
There is a slight slowdown
The overall performance of the system seems to be dragged down by something
I know as well that i don't have the top notch hardware but... i'm a bit frustrated

Just for the sake of testing i downloaded the "''almighty"PC Linux OS

BRACKETS OPENED
I don't want to be mean or to take any sides
and i think it's really foolish to preach the superiority of one distro over another
I've been a Red Hat/Fedora user for a while
I ran away from Fedora/ Mandriva/ ...etc and derivatives just because of the dependencies nightmare
Debian/Ubuntu/Mint offered me what i've been looking for... in years:;; hassle free software installations and i say THANK YOU
That doesnt mean all the others are garbage and ONLY the one that i am using it's worth using like i often see in those so called "reviews:
The Linux world shoud be friendlier and people should just learn from each other

Anyways ....
BRACKETS CLOSED

And now that i vented

In PC Linux OS the windows pop up on my screen with no effort
Loaded some monitoring tools in Karamba and it seems like i am using as low as
127Mb of RAM -nothing opened
Using Live Cd and no Beryl
Is Beryl using so much RAM?
Damn then
Bling bling has its price then huh?!

[scorp123]

In fact i feel it's a bit ... sluggish

Check these files:

/etc/hosts:

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1       localhost   YourHostNameHere

... replace 'YourHostNameHere' with the hostname of your machine. Chances are that this is already setup like this maybe?

Care for some memory tuning maybe? Add these lines to the end of your '/etc/sysctl.conf' file:

/etc/sysctl.conf:

Code: Select all

# Swappiness
# Modification of Swappiness according to this URL:
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1255511&postcount=43
# '100' swaps at maximum rate = good for slow machines with little RAM
# '0' tries to avoid swapping = good for fast machines with lots of RAM
# Linux Kernel's default value is 60! (this sucks!)
#
vm.swappiness=1
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

... then reboot so that the changes can take effect (there is a way to activate them without rebooting ... it's just I don't remember it at the moment )

This should increase the perceived speed of your machine and make things 'snappier' .... it sure as hell did on my systems

[scorp123]

Is Beryl using so much RAM?

Nope. I use it all the time. It's fast like hell here, e.g. right now on my laptop (hp dv2108ea with 1 GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU, Intel GMA950 graphics, 100 GB SATA). The memory figures I provided earlier were done while Beryl + Emerald were running.

If you feel your system is 'sluggish' then maybe something isn't setup or configured right.

[linuxviolin]

there is a way to activate them without rebooting ... it's just I don't remember it at the moment

Maybe you can reload them with

/sbin/sysctl -p

[scorp123]

/sbin/sysctl -p

Duh. Of course (or why else would the config file be named sysctl.conf ...?) Oh dear. Note to self: more coffee ......

Thanks

[Husse]

I have a feeling that the /etc/hosts file should look like

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1	localhost
127.0.1.1	<your user name>

I used the sysctl tip as I have 2 GB RAM I would not need the default 60
It remains to be seen if I note any difference

[scorp123]

I have a feeling that the /etc/hosts file should look like

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1	localhost
127.0.1.1	<your user name>

"your user name" ??? Definitely not

Ask yourself: What's your username doing in a file dealing with resolving hostnames to TCP/IP addresses? If anything you could put your hostname there. But it's silly. There is no interface that has that address "127.0.1.1", so this would resolve to nothing (you could just as well leave the entire line away). Hence it's better to put it to the loopback interface (lo0) where 127.0.0.1 will correctly resolve to it.

[photek]

Thank you guys for your kind replies!

I am still trying my best here


Lastly i'll try a new kernel and see how it goes.
I'll keep you posted


thanks again!

[Husse]

@ scorp
I agree with

What's your username doing in a file dealing with resolving hostname

It should be <your host name> which often is Your_user_name-desktop or so
Edit//Removed some content - sometimes I write faster than I think
but yes I was wrong
My memory did not serve me right
It should be

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1 localhost <your host name>
127.0.1.1 <your host name> 

The reason for this found here
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... /etc/hosts

[linuxviolin]

For some explanations on swappiness, vfs_cache_pressure to accelerate Linux you can look at http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/10/02/t ... -fix-that/

See also at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ ... ning.patch
for some info on vfs_cache_pressure

A critical yet: man command is our friend, this is the truth (hey scorp?! ) but this is one of the places where the Linux kernel sucks, because it doesn't quite follow the claimed philosophy. man sysctl and man sysctl.conf DON'T DOCUMENT ANY of the system variables!

So for cache_pressure we really need to do some blind experiments.

[GoustiFruit]

Wow, just checked and MintUpdate is using 35+ MB here !?

Also Tomboy takes 12 MB, I think I'm going to disable it

[linuxviolin]

Also Tomboy takes 12 MB, I think I'm going to disable it

Doesn't just disable it but remove it!
It is a Mono ('Microsoft') application. More, it comes with 4 .dll and 2 .exe (see at http://packages.debian.org/etch/tomboy/i386/filelist) - as I said about Banshee at http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 522#p39522 that is exactly what you needed to feel "at home" in Linux.