[ale] System losing memory

[timothy at meanor.net]

Try this:
ps -eo pid,rss,vsize,args | sort -n -k 3,3

This outputs PID, resident set size (all non-swapped memory process is using), vsize (virtual memory size of process), and command-line & args of each process, sorted by vsize.

Do you have any oom_kill messages in any logs in /var/log/ ?  I can't remember if it actually says "oom_kill" in the message, or if it just says "killing process".

It's interesting that your system has swap completely utilized, yet almost all memory in use is pagecache.  I recall seeing this before on older Red Hat boxes, but I can't remember what causes this.

-Tim  

>>I have a Centos 4.4 system that periodically runs out of memory and swap:
>>
>>Tasks:  70 total,   1 running,  69 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
>>Cpu(s):  2.1% us,  1.1% sy,  0.0% ni, 81.2% id, 15.6% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
>>Mem:    483356k total,   468160k used,    15196k free,    10132k buffers
>>Swap:  1048568k total,  1048568k used,        0k free,   365392k cached
>>
>>I can't even run a cc command.  The -b output of top shows nothing with 
>>a lot of memory, named has 38 M and one other task has 12 M and nothing 
>>else is over 10 M. 
>>
>>Is there something I can run that might tell me who's got all the 
>>memory/swap?
>>
>>Is there a way to hide a process that top won't display?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Jim.
>>_______________________________________________
>>Ale mailing list
>>Ale at ale.org
>>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale