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4.6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux-Specific Information
Due to the inherent complexity of being a demand-paged virtual memory operating system, monitoring memory-related resources under Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be confusing. Therefore, it is best to start with the more straightforward tools, and work from there.
Using
free, it is possible to get a concise (if somewhat simplistic) overview of memory and swap utilization. Here is an example:
total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1288720 361448 927272 0 27844 187632 -/+ buffers/cache: 145972 1142748 Swap: 522104 0 522104
We note that this system has 1.2GB of RAM, of which only about 350MB is actually in use. As expected for a system with this much free RAM, none of the 500MB swap partition is in use.
Contrast that example with this one:
total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 255088 246604 8484 0 6492 111320 -/+ buffers/cache: 128792 126296 Swap: 530136 111308 418828
This system has about 256MB of RAM, the majority of which is in use, leaving only about 8MB free. Over 100MB of the 512MB swap partition is in use. Although this system is certainly more limited in terms of memory than the first system, to determine if this memory limitation is causing performance problems we must dig a bit deeper.
Although more cryptic than
free, vmstat has the benefit of displaying more than memory utilization statistics. Here is the output from vmstat 1 10:
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 2 0 111304 9728 7036 107204 0 0 6 10 120 24 10 2 89 0 2 0 111304 9728 7036 107204 0 0 0 0 526 1653 96 4 0 0 1 0 111304 9616 7036 107204 0 0 0 0 552 2219 94 5 1 0 1 0 111304 9616 7036 107204 0 0 0 0 624 699 98 2 0 0 2 0 111304 9616 7052 107204 0 0 0 48 603 1466 95 5 0 0 3 0 111304 9620 7052 107204 0 0 0 0 768 932 90 4 6 0 3 0 111304 9440 7076 107360 92 0 244 0 820 1230 85 9 6 0 2 0 111304 9276 7076 107368 0 0 0 0 832 1060 87 6 7 0 3 0 111304 9624 7092 107372 0 0 16 0 813 1655 93 5 2 0 2 0 111304 9624 7108 107372 0 0 0 972 1189 1165 68 9 23 0
During this 10-second sample, the amount of free memory (the
free field) varies somewhat, and there is a bit of swap-related I/O (the si and so fields), but overall this system is running well. It is doubtful, however, how much additional workload it could handle, given the current memory utilization.
When researching memory-related issues, it is often necessary to determine how the Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual memory subsystem is making use of system memory. By using
sar, it is possible to examine this aspect of system performance in much more detail.
By reviewing the
sar -r report, we can examine memory and swap utilization more closely:
Linux 2.4.20-1.1931.2.231.2.10.ent (pigdog.example.com) 07/22/2003 12:00:01 AM kbmemfree kbmemused %memused kbmemshrd kbbuffers kbcached 12:10:00 AM 240468 1048252 81.34 0 133724 485772 12:20:00 AM 240508 1048212 81.34 0 134172 485600 … 08:40:00 PM 934132 354588 27.51 0 26080 185364 Average: 324346 964374 74.83 0 96072 467559
The
kbmemfree and kbmemused fields show the typical free and used memory statistics, with the percentage of memory used displayed in the %memused field. The kbbuffers and kbcached fields show how many kilobytes of memory are allocated to buffers and the system-wide data cache.
The
kbmemshrd field is always zero for systems (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux) using the 2.4 Linux kernel.
The lines for this report have been truncated to fit on the page. Here is the remainder of each line, with the timestamp added to the left to make reading easier:
12:00:01 AM kbswpfree kbswpused %swpused 12:10:00 AM 522104 0 0.00 12:20:00 AM 522104 0 0.00 … 08:40:00 PM 522104 0 0.00 Average: 522104 0 0.00
For swap utilization, the
kbswpfree and kbswpused fields show the amount of free and used swap space, in kilobytes, with the %swpused field showing the swap space used as a percentage.
To learn more about the swapping activity taking place, use the
sar -W report. Here is an example:
Linux 2.4.20-1.1931.2.231.2.10.entsmp (raptor.example.com) 07/22/2003 12:00:01 AM pswpin/s pswpout/s 12:10:01 AM 0.15 2.56 12:20:00 AM 0.00 0.00 … 03:30:01 PM 0.42 2.56 Average: 0.11 0.37
Here we notice that, on average, there were three times fewer pages being brought in from swap (
pswpin/s) as there were going out to swap (pswpout/s).
To better understand how pages are being used, refer to the
sar -B report:
Linux 2.4.20-1.1931.2.231.2.10.entsmp (raptor.example.com) 07/22/2003 12:00:01 AM pgpgin/s pgpgout/s activepg inadtypg inaclnpg inatarpg 12:10:00 AM 0.03 8.61 195393 20654 30352 49279 12:20:00 AM 0.01 7.51 195385 20655 30336 49275 … 08:40:00 PM 0.00 7.79 71236 1371 6760 15873 Average: 201.54 201.54 169367 18999 35146 44702
Here we can determine how many blocks per second are paged in from disk (
pgpgin/s) and paged out to disk (pgpgout/s). These statistics serve as a barometer of overall virtual memory activity.
However, more knowledge can be gained by examining the other fields in this report. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel marks all pages as either active or inactive. As the names imply, active pages are currently in use in some manner (as process or buffer pages, for example), while inactive pages are not. This example report shows that the list of active pages (the
activepg field) averages approximately 660MB[13].
The remainder of the fields in this report concentrate on the inactive list -- pages that, for one reason or another, have not recently been used. The
inadtypg field shows how many inactive pages are dirty (modified) and may need to be written to disk. The inaclnpg field, on the other hand, shows how many inactive pages are clean (unmodified) and do not need to be written to disk.
The
inatarpg field represents the desired size of the inactive list. This value is calculated by the Linux kernel and is sized such that the inactive list remains large enough to act as a pool for page replacement purposes.
For additional insight into page status (specifically, how often pages change status), use the
sar -R report. Here is a sample report:
Linux 2.4.20-1.1931.2.231.2.10.entsmp (raptor.example.com) 07/22/2003 12:00:01 AM frmpg/s shmpg/s bufpg/s campg/s 12:10:00 AM -0.10 0.00 0.12 -0.07 12:20:00 AM 0.02 0.00 0.19 -0.07 … 08:50:01 PM -3.19 0.00 0.46 0.81 Average: 0.01 0.00 -0.00 -0.00
The statistics in this particular
sar report are unique, in that they may be positive, negative, or zero. When positive, the value indicates the rate at which pages of this type are increasing. When negative, the value indicates the rate at which pages of this type are decreasing. A value of zero indicates that pages of this type are neither increasing or decreasing.
In this example, the last sample shows slightly over three pages per second being allocated from the list of free pages (the
frmpg/s field) and nearly 1 page per second added to the page cache (the campg/s field). The list of pages used as buffers (the bufpg/s field) gained approximately one page every two seconds, while the shared memory page list (the shmpg/s field) neither gained nor lost any pages.
[13]
The page size under Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the x86 system used in this example is 4096 bytes. Systems based on other architectures may have different page sizes.
