topic Re: interpreting "top" and "swapinfo" memory usage in Operating System - HP-UX

interpreting "top" and "swapinfo" memory usage

David Black_5 — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 01:05:34 GMT

I am having problems understanding the figures from top and swapinfo, they don't seem to correlate, see below:
TOP
Load averages: 0.32, 0.50, 0.60
327 processes: 298 sleeping, 28 running, 1 zombie
Cpu states:
CPU LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
0 0.35 1.0% 0.0% 2.4% 96.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
1 0.28 0.0% 63.6% 8.5% 27.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
2 0.24 1.4% 0.2% 4.4% 94.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
3 0.43 7.0% 25.8% 4.8% 62.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
--- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
avg 0.32 2.4% 22.5% 5.0% 70.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 1938708K (515936K) real, 2824156K (833892K) virtual, 150052K free

swapinfo
Kb Kb Kb PCT START/ Kb
TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 4194304 330780 3863524 8% 0 - 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2
reserve - 1730372 -1730372
memory 3207192 1335372 1871820 42%
total 7401496 3396524 4004972 46% - 0

TOP is showing 1938708K real memory, when in fact I know there is 4GB on this box, swapinfo confirms this in the "memory" section. Also top
shows virtual memory as 2824156K but again I have defined a 4GB swap area (see swapinfo).
Am I misinterpreting the values or is pseudo swapping effecting the figures?

Thanks,
Dave Black

Re: interpreting "top" and "swapinfo" memory usage

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 01:36:58 GMT

swapinfo -tam is going to deliver you better, more usuable numbers.

You are swapping lightly from these figures.

You may want to use vmstat to collect data over time with averages, or the script I'm attaching , the virutal memory portion.

SEP

Re: interpreting "top" and "swapinfo" memory usage

Sundar_7 — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:29:02 GMT

DONOT go by swapinfo memory output. That is just information on the psuedo swap.

You will see that memory line in the swapinfo if you have the kernel parameter swapmem_on set to 1 and it is approximately 75% of your total physical memory. This is decided dynamically at boot time.

The top memory line shows only the real and virtual memory that is currently being used with the "active" virtual/real memory shown in the parenthesis.