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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Extremely low memory system Date: 21 Sep 1995 19:28:31 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 35 Message-ID: <43secv$r88@news.iastate.edu> References: <43a1u6$572@tuba.cit.cornell.edu> <MICHAELV.95Sep18221451@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> <43nk62$d8@news.iastate.edu> <43nm88$l9@csugrad.cs.vt.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv21f2.vincent.iastate.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:61788 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:6519 In article <43nm88$l9@csugrad.cs.vt.edu>, Carl Harris <ceharris@vt.edu> wrote: >Rick Hawkins (rhawkins@iastate.edu) wrote: >: Of the alphas, 3 are 64M models, which, under our typical usage, have >: enough memory to support 2-3 users before paging becomes an issue. >: These xterms would be used as the 2d/3d user for these machines (or the >: rest when the public lab is closed; grad student room is 24 hr). > >This is really off-topic for this group, but what the hell... > >Sheesh. Your "typical" usage must be pretty blistering. There are >frequently 10 or more users on the 64MB Alpha 3000/600 systems in our labs, >and swapping really doesn't become a problem until 25 or more are on >compiling PHIGS applications or some such. Disk I/O is the biggest hangup >for us. Heck, we have a 96 MB 3000/600 that averages 50 users logged in. >Granted, it uses a RAID to ease the disk I/O constraints, but it isn't >sitting there running email apps and idle logins either -- it runs a >full-feed news server, and a major web server. we tend to be using statistical packages with large data sets. I frequently use smalltalk, which is less than memory friendly :) The simulation packages on one of them nearkly kills it single-handedly; it isn't even useful as an xterminal with that going. also, although there are 1G drives in these things, most storage is central over the campus network. >You aren't trying to run with aggressive swapping, are you? i haven't a clue . . at the moment, on this machine, top reports load averages: 0.02, 0.05, 0.04 14:25:17 43 processes: 1 running, 5 waiting, 10 sleeping, 27 idle Cpu states: 7.3% user, 0.0% nice, 13.9% system, 78.7% idle Memory: Real: 36M/53M act/tot Virtual: 1M/187M use/tot Free: 1416K -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu