Thanks to all the responses. General consensus is that system is low on
memory as evidenced by the ~1024 pages of free memory. To further investate
swapping I could use swapon -s, and in general I can use collect to gather
useful information. Also suggested were sys_check -perf and vmstat -P.
Most folks considered that this system is paging more than is desireable.
Thanks again
Bill Skulley
DynCorp I&ET
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Skulley, William
> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 3:08 PM
> To: 'tru64-unix-managers_at_ornl.gov'
> Subject: Paging/Swapping?
>
> I know these are probably simple questions, but I seem to be unable to
> wrap my head around these.
>
> I have been investigating complaints of "slowness" on a ES40 (3CPU, 2GB
> RAM, 11GB swap) Tru64 5.0a system. I have been attempting to use the
> information contained in the "System Configuration and Tuning" book to
> assist. Because disk and processor don't seem overloaded, we are
> suspecting a memory shortage. I think I understand the difference between
> paging and swapping, but I am not sure how to tell (aside from ps aux and
> look for "W" in state) if the system is actually swapping or not? Also,
> the manual refers to "excessive". What is excessive? The following is
> selected information from a vmstat 300:
>
> procs memory pages intr cpu
> r w u act free wire fault cow zero react pin pout in sy cs us
> sy id
> 4 339 42 272K 921 39K 36490 1740 19K 2134 5040 116 193 3K 1K 6
> 4 91
> 4 339 43 271K 1002 38K 20760 797 11K 10 1299 18 260 5K 2K 12
> 4 84
> 4 343 41 273K 942 39K 34916 2028 26K 5 3083 0 276 5K 2K 13
> 4 83
> 5 341 41 284K 1013 38K 29306 1096 14K 75 3338 10 219 6K 2K 16
> 5 79
> 6 343 40 266K 1022 39K 45211 1158 39K 21 2172 4 157 8K 1K 24
> 5 71
> 4 345 40 249K 12K 38K 40086 1306 21K 75701 15K 3891 217 8K 1K 25
> 6 69
> 4 344 41 260K 976 38K 24567 284 16K 7278 6176 806 203 8K 1K 12
> 3 84
>
> I suspect the last couple of lines could be defined as "excessive"? Any
> suggestions on further pinpointing an actual issue (aside from getting
> more information than "its slow")?
>
> Thanks
> Bill Skulley
> DynCorp I&ET
Received on Thu May 17 2001 - 18:56:18 NZST