Hi Scott, The top and M option:
top - 20:37:52 up 8:19, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Tasks: 96 total, 1 running, 95 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.5%id, 0.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 4011 postgres 18 0 298m 276m 251m S 0 7.8 0:40.16 postgres 2950 postgres 15 0 271m 232m 231m S 0 6.6 0:01.06 postgres 2938 postgres 18 0 271m 7120 6748 S 0 0.2 0:00.31 postgres 3012 root 18 0 10852 5644 1588 S 0 0.2 0:00.01 miniserv.pl 2660 root 15 0 13448 4616 968 S 0 0.1 0:00.01 python 2732 ntp 15 0 4316 4316 3312 S 0 0.1 0:00.04 ntpd 2397 root 12 -3 10100 3860 2272 S 0 0.1 0:00.08 python 2870 haldaemo 18 0 5700 3724 1608 S 0 0.1 0:01.51 hald 5917 root 18 0 10424 2804 1388 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5992 root 15 0 9000 2724 2204 S 0 0.1 0:00.03 sshd 5140 root 16 0 8996 2720 2204 S 0 0.1 0:00.04 sshd 5918 apache 23 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5920 apache 23 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5921 apache 23 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5922 apache 23 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5923 apache 25 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5924 apache 25 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5925 apache 25 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 5926 apache 25 0 10424 2084 632 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 httpd 2696 root 18 0 9676 1968 1360 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 cupsd 2757 root 15 0 9028 1860 776 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 Thank you! sendmail2009/9/25 Scott Marlowe <scott.marl...@gmail.com> > On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Carlos Henrique Reimer > <carlos.rei...@opendb.com.br> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > We're facing performance problems in a Linux box running CentOS release 5 > > (Final) and PostgreSQL 8.2.4. I've done some basic checks in the > > configuration but everything looks fine to me. One weird behaviour I've > > found is the cached size showed by the > > "top" and "free" Linux commands: > > > > top - 08:32:17 up 3 days, 19:04, 1 user, load average: 1.09, 1.07, 1.10 > > Tasks: 173 total, 2 running, 170 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie > > Cpu(s): 9.5%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 88.2%id, 1.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, > > 0.0%st > > Mem: 3631900k total, 3378056k used, 253844k free, 25488k buffers > > Swap: 4192956k total, 100k used, 4192856k free, 2356588k cached > > > > [postg...@server01 etc]$ free > > total used free shared buffers cached > > Mem: 3631900 3174804 457096 0 14280 2086184 > > -/+ buffers/cache: 1074340 2557560 > > Swap: 4192956 108 4192848 > > [postg...@server01 etc]$ > > > > Both commands show values ranging from 2GB to 2.3GB for the cached size > and > > the server has 3.5GB RAM. I do usally see cached values with sizes > bearing > > the size of the RAM in other servers. It seams that something is > consuming > > the RAM and not letting it free to be used as cache for Linux files, > right? > > The shared_buffers (256MB) is not high and I can not see a reason for > this. > > Initially I've thought the problem was > > because the system was running with runlevel 5, but now, it's running > with > > runlevel 3 and even so the values for > > cached size does not change. > > > > Any suggestions or directions I could follow to discover the reason? > > If you run top, then hit M, and post the first 20 or so rows after > what you have here I can take a guess. > -- Reimer 47-3457-0881 47-9183-0547 msn: carlosrei...@hotmail.com skype: carlosreimer