'ps' behavoir in Linux - Was - Re: array limits

[Jerry Rains]

Info from as400linux1 during operations.  See below.

On Sunday 18 April 2004 11:19, Jerry Rains wrote:
> On Sunday 18 April 2004 11:21, Fairlight wrote:
> > Y'all catch dis heeyah?  Jerry Rains been jivin' 'bout like:
> > > Ok, the main problem I seem to have is with the desktop Linux I am
> > > using. This morning I rebooted the system to shut down any extra
> > > processes and logged into tty1 and tty2 to start a dclerk process then
> > > see what was going on.  I did a 'free' command and there was no swap
> > > memory being used, however with only the two text logins dclerk was
> > > still swapped out on my system.  The logon header confirmed that my
> > > system is indeed SuSE 8.2.  Since I only use this system for my Desktop
> > > needs, I'm not going to worry about why.
> > >
> > > My problem is at work so I dialed back in this morning.  The system was
> > > idle and ps aux worked fine.
> > >
> > > SuSE Linux on iSeries -- the spicy solution!
> > > Have a lot of fun...
> > > filepro at as400linux1:/var/appl/filepro> w
> > >   9:13am  up  3:22,  3 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.03, 0.05
> > >   USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
> > >   root     pts/2    -                 8:50am 23:33   0.00s   ?     -
> > >   filepro  pts/3    -                 9:13am  0.00s  0.64s  0.02s  w
> > >   filepro at as400linux1:/var/appl/filepro> free
> > >                           total       used       free     shared
> > > buffers cached
> > > Mem:       1001668     261940     739728          0      51004    
> > > 127036 -/+ buffers/cache:      83900     917768
> > >                Swap:       996020          0     996020
> > >                filepro at as400linux1:/var/appl/filepro> ps aux | grep
> > > dclerk filepro  14020  7.0  0.1  2480 1204 pts/0    S    09:14   0:01
> > > /appl/fp/dclerk vregstr -s1 -h Vregister -d
> > >                filepro  14038  0.0  0.0  1740  656 pts/3    S    09:14
> > > 0:00 grep dclerk
> > >                filepro at as400linux1:/var/appl/filepro>
> > >
> > > So the answer is, even though we have 1Gb of memory, we don't have
> > > enough memory to prevent swapping during operations.  I'll look into
> > > seeing if I can move some of the memory from the OS400 side to the
> > > Linux partition.
> > >
> > > Thanks to all who helped.
> >
> > But that doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense, unless you've confused
> > the issue.  You're saying on SuSE 8.2, you can have zero swap used, and
> > dclerk is still swapped out.  That's what you said.  At least, that's
> > what I read.
> >
> > Then you said that the system at -work- has a gig of memory, and you
> > point to ps auxww working fine there, and showing arguments, etc.
>
> Actually, I used 'ps aux'  I didn't have to use 'ps auxw' or 'ps auxww'
>
> >  IOW, the process is not swapped out--on a totally different system.
> >
> > The question is, why did you show stats from the iSeries that -isn't-
> > having problems instead of stats from the system that -is- having
> > problems?
>
> Because I first noticed the problem on the iseries.  I was only using my
> home system because it was convenient and it seemed to have the same
> problem.
>
> > FWIW, I'm seriously questioning why 8.2 would be swapping out dclerk. 
> > What kernel revision comes up in `uname -a` on the 8.2 system, out of
> > curiosity?
>
> I included that in one or two of the emails, but here it is again.
>
> jmrains at Coastal:~> uname -a
> Linux Coastal 2.4.20-4GB #1 Mon Mar 17 17:54:44 UTC 2003 i686 unknown
> unknown GNU/Linux
> jmrains at Coastal:~>
>
> > If it's old enough, it could be a mutant <2.4.15 system, and then this
> > would start making a hell of a lot more sense, given the VM model issues
> > extant through that period.  Indeed, I heard many reports of processes
> > being swapped out in favour of disk cache (a la Windows) in the earlier
> > days of the 2.4 tree's new VM, notably from 2.4.3 through 2.4.16.  "Have
> > you done an update of the kernel on that system to the latest revision?"
> > would be my next question.
>
> I used Synaptic to update the system after I installed it about 6 weeks
> ago. I don't think that updated the kernel.  I'll do another update and see
> if that helps.
>
> > Show the `free` output from -that- system.
>
> jmrains at Coastal:~> free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:        254820     250896       3924          0       5652      45952
> -/+ buffers/cache:     199292      55528
> Swap:       257032      50556     206476
> jmrains at Coastal:~>
>
> > You have a gig of memory available on the iSeries, that's apparently
> > -not- having issues, and you want to toss more at it,
>
> The info you saw from the iseries was taken yesterday morning while the
> business was closed and the system was idling.  I mentioned that in my
> email. I noticed the problem while we were operating with about 35 users.
>
> Jerry

This info was taken today.  Notice that there are 2 *clerk processes that have 
full arguments, but the rest only have [rclerk].  The two with full arguments 
were both started from scripts from the command line, although later in the 
day a 3rd one showed up that I wasn't familiar with, but I suspect it also 
started from a script, however, I suspect that it was an F5 menu script.  I 
haven't pinned this down yet.

'free' shows that there was no swapping going on (see below).

Most of the [rclerk] processes below were started from standard filePro menus.

as400linux1> ps aux | grep clerk
filepro   1101  0.0  0.0  2000  984 pts/5    S    07:50   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   1257  0.0  0.0  1996  884 pts/9    S    07:51   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   1644  0.0  0.0  2000  896 pts/15   S    07:54   0:01 [rclerk]
filepro   1724  0.0  0.1  2260 1376 pts/17   S    07:55   0:10 [rclerk]
filepro   1765  0.0  0.1  2528 1524 pts/0    S    07:55   0:11 [rclerk]
filepro   3049  0.0  0.0  2000  948 pts/21   S    08:08   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   3150  0.0  0.0  2044 1000 pts/39   S    08:09   0:03 [rclerk]
filepro   3202  0.0  0.1  2160 1152 pts/41   S    08:09   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   3759  0.0  0.1  2280 1344 pts/42   S    08:16   0:04 [rclerk]
filepro   5405  0.0  0.0  2000  924 pts/48   S    08:31   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   5479  0.0  0.0  2000  912 pts/49   S    08:31   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   7734  0.0  0.0  2008  956 pts/30   S    08:48   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  10592  0.0  0.1  2244 1288 pts/46   S    09:11   0:04 [rclerk]
filepro  10933  0.0  0.0  2008  936 pts/53   S    09:12   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  16531  0.0  0.1  2028 1048 pts/54   S    10:03   0:01 [rclerk]
filepro  21042  0.0  0.0  2000  888 pts/51   S    10:47   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  21177  0.0  0.1  2036 1004 pts/4    S    10:48   0:00 /appl/fp/rclerk 
tasktimer -s0 -h Task Timer -d -xif
filepro  21271  0.0  0.1  2516 1516 pts/52   S    10:49   0:10 [rclerk]
filepro  21337  0.0  0.1  2068 1124 pts/58   S    10:50   0:05 [rclerk]
filepro  22528  0.0  0.0  2000  948 pts/31   S    11:00   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  22848  0.0  0.1  2092 1116 pts/3    S    11:02   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  23052  0.0  0.1  2160 1168 pts/35   S    11:04   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  24233  0.0  0.1  2112 1128 pts/44   S    11:19   0:01 [rclerk]
filepro  27570  0.0  0.1  2444 1492 pts/6    S    11:56   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  27694  0.0  0.0  2000  944 pts/12   S    11:58   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  29240  0.0  0.1  2080 1132 pts/1    S    12:21   0:06 [rclerk]
filepro  29682  0.0  0.0  2008  936 pts/26   S    12:28   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro    486  0.0  0.0  2044  976 pts/18   S    13:14   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   4140  0.0  0.1  2468 1516 pts/14   S    14:00   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   4168  0.0  0.0  2000  884 pts/8    S    14:00   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   4429  0.0  0.1  2204 1228 pts/28   S    14:04   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   5343  0.0  0.0  2000  892 pts/20   S    14:17   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   6069  0.0  0.1  2084 1176 pts/38   S    14:27   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   6540  0.0  0.0  2000  912 pts/32   S    14:33   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   6652  0.0  0.0  2048  972 pts/40   S    14:34   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   6714  0.0  0.0  2032  948 pts/10   S    14:35   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   7256  0.0  0.0  2000  868 pts/37   S    14:43   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   7536  0.0  0.0  2044  976 pts/19   S    14:46   0:01 [rclerk]
filepro   7850  0.0  0.0  2044  984 pts/43   S    14:51   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro   8013  0.1  0.1  2060 1120 pts/2    S    14:53   0:02 [rclerk]
filepro   8077  5.4  0.1  2088 1152 pts/16   S    14:54   1:24 [rclerk]
filepro  11816  0.0  0.1  2228 1240 pts/60   S    15:06   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  12474  0.0  0.1  2228 1252 pts/47   S    15:12   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  13010  0.0  0.0  2044  996 pts/36   S    15:15   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  13077  0.1  0.1  2160 1148 pts/56   S    15:15   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  13301  0.1  0.1  2196 1228 pts/22   S    15:17   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  13441  0.1  0.1  2052 1060 pts/13   S    15:18   0:00 [rclerk]
filepro  13715 16.7  0.1  2480 1204 pts/27   S    15:19   0:02 /appl/fp/dclerk 
vregstr -s1 -h Vregister -d
filepro  13774  0.0  0.0  1740  688 pts/33   S    15:20   0:00 grep clerk

as400linux1> free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1001668     996708       4960          0      66832     630760
-/+ buffers/cache:     299116     702552
Swap:       996020          0     996020

as400linux1> uname -a
Linux as400linux1 2.4.19-ul1-iseries64-SMP #1 SMP Wed Apr 16 10:24:17 UTC 2003 
ppc64 unknown

Jerry