Memory Usage {Scanned}

[Rick Cooper]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
> Behalf Of Karl Bailey
> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 12:34 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Memory Usage {Scanned}
>
>
> I've run MailScanner with sendmail for over a year, hasn't gone
> wrong once, I always upgrade to latest version. Mail gets past
> through spam assassin & three virus scanners, it started life on
> a 2Ghz dual xeon machine with 1 Gbyte ram running RH7.3, it now
> lives on a 3Ghz dual xeon with 2Gbytes ram under RH9.0. I also
> manage a remote mailscanner in a small office RH8.0 single
> 1100Mhz PIII with 512MBytes ram.. Same results! The machines are
> dedicated & no gui is running, it's a very trimmed down install.
>
> My memory usage is through the roof all the time, never drops
> below 90% of physical memory used, this was first seen using
> snmp, I got interested & ran mailscanner-mrtg both show the same
> thing.. Memory usage through the roof. I can attach the mem graph
> if you wish.. But my point is... There seems to be no problem
> with this machines are solid, but I am interested in why the
> memory usage is so high, I figured I'd claw some of the memory
> back when upgrading the machine to 2Gbyte of ram but it seems as
> much of the memory is grabbed as possible by MailScanner.
>

Basically *NIX systems hate wasted ram, unlike Windows they will put unused
ram to use for extra buffers and cache which generally results in much
higher performance. It would be quite unusual to look at a free -m output
and not see your free ram shrinking while buffers and cache are growing.
Look at the link below it gives some pretty good information about Linux and
memory usage and most *nix implementations are very similar

http://www.linux-tutorial.info/cgi-bin/display.pl?82&0&310&0&3



> Regards
> Karl Bailey
> Systems Administrator
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list
> [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of David Shaw
> Sent: 01 April 2004 00:00
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Memory Usage {Scanned}
>
> I thought the same thing, but Ricks comment are correct.
>
> Here is my output. Look at the 2nd line under free. I have 781256 free.
> 12-9-14-103 rules]# free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:       1030908     977196      53712          0     215396     512148
> -/+ buffers/cache:     249652     781256
> Swap:      2040244      23628    2016616
>
>
> David
> --
> Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)
>
>
> ---------- Original Message -----------
> From: Kai Schaetzl <maillists at CONACTIVE.COM>
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Sent: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 00:36:59 +0200
> Subject: Re: Memory Usage {Scanned}
>
> > Rob Burtelow wrote on         Wed, 31 Mar 2004 10:58:02 -0600:
> >
> > > I'm running MailScanner on a RedHat ES 3 box and having problems
> > > with really high memory usage, almost to the point of running out.
> > >
> >
> > Apart from Ricks comment, even if you *had* a memory problem there's
> > nothing in your posted data which would indicate that Mailscanner
> > causes the problem.
> >
> > Kai
> >
> > --
> >
> > Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
> > Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com
> > IE-Center: http://ie5.de & http://msie.winware.org
> >
> > --
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> ------- End of Original Message -------
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