[ILUG] kde and memory

[Niall O Broin]

On 30 Aug 2004, at 09:40, Kevin Philp wrote:

> We have a computer here running kde 3.2 and Mandrake 10.0 that runs 
> slow from
> time to time. I am wondering if its the memory.
>
> Server: 2ghz AMD processor, 512mb RAM, Mandrake 9.1 - FAST
>
> Client. 2ghz AMD processor, 256mb ram, Mandrake 10.0 - SLOW
>
> Do you really need >256mb ram to run KDE 3.2? The server runs kde 3.1 
> plus
> Apache, MySQL, postfix, squid, bind and flys along.

The server has TWICE as much memory, and probably doesn't run Open 
Office. Squid can be a memory gobbler, but that is configuration 
dependent.

You asked this the other day. Did you miss my response then? I'll 
repeat it below, just in case. In the last message, you mentioned Open 
Office, which you omitted to mention above. Certainly 256M RAM is a bit 
low to run OOo and KDE 3.2 and whatever other applications without 
running into swap.


------------- My last response 
------------------------------------------------------------

RAM, RAM, ramity RAM. The box in question doesn't have a load of  RAM 
(in terms of running KDE and OOo), and as time goes by in KDE more and 
more memory is used, and hence more and more swap (reboot the machine, 
and watch the swap usage (top works nicely, but there may be a KDE 
graphical thingy too) as the machine is used for a while).

This is an issue with the 2.4 kernel, which will use swap rather than 
reclaiming pages from applications, although this often leads to poor 
application performance. With 2.6, you can adjust some kernel 
parameters which control the kernel's 'swappiness'  and can improve 
perceived performance in such situations.

The solution is to buy some more RAM for the client, or use 2.6 and 
play around with the 'swappiness' parameters.


Niall