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3 votes
3 answers
7003 views
What is paging space in AIX?
I get that Paging Space in AIX is actually like SWAP in Linux. In one of my AIX servers at work, i'm actually seeing 99.7% Physical memory being utilized when my application is running(handling quite some data). Most of the time Server is utilizing 95% of Physical memory(RAM). From the pic attached,...
I get that Paging Space in AIX is actually like SWAP in Linux. In one of my AIX servers at work, i'm actually seeing 99.7% Physical memory being utilized when my application is running(handling quite some data). Most of the time Server is utilizing 95% of Physical memory(RAM). From the pic attached, we can see Paging Space is being utilized. And i believe my Application can run little faster if i upgrade RAM. But i am not able to convince the management. They say that still Paging Space is there and until it's utilized fully, no need to upgrade RAM. enter image description here Isn't paging Space actually in Hard Disk ? OS actually transfer data between Paging Space(Hard Disk) & RAM back & forth in case of High Memory Utilization ? Can someone please shed light that if i am using up 99.7% of Physical Memory - RAM in Server,it's a Good reason to upgrade RAM ? Note: I'm posting here as a last resort and in need of proof to convince my management to upgrade the RAM in my server before Christmas, as i will be seeing quite a lot of data during Christmas. So Please, before down-voting, at least help me what's wrong with my question and help me get an answer.
Bruce (31 rep)
Dec 5, 2017, 06:59 PM • Last activity: Jul 11, 2025, 02:05 AM
9 votes
1 answers
2607 views
How can I find out what is making my SLAB Unreclaimable Memory Grow without bound
My SLAB unreclaimable memory (SUnreclaim) grows without bounds and this appears to be the reason why my system eventually runs out of RAM and starts trying to swap until it dies. Here's a graph of my SUreclaim over a couple of days. My typical RAM usage is about 5GB on a 16GB server. When the SUrecl...
My SLAB unreclaimable memory (SUnreclaim) grows without bounds and this appears to be the reason why my system eventually runs out of RAM and starts trying to swap until it dies. Here's a graph of my SUreclaim over a couple of days. My typical RAM usage is about 5GB on a 16GB server. When the SUreclaim gets to about 10.xGB the endless swapping starts. These graphs show it growing endlessly and me rebooting it to free up the RAM, in these 2 cases, before it causes my system to swap itself to death. enter image description here Here's a partial slabtop just before the 2nd reboot. ---------------------------------- 20180730164416 ---------------------------------- Active / Total Objects (% used) : 34014938 / 35150125 (96.8%) Active / Total Slabs (% used) : 1098114 / 1098114 (100.0%) Active / Total Caches (% used) : 120 / 147 (81.6%) Active / Total Size (% used) : 7332279.93K / 7831039.90K (93.6%) Minimum / Average / Maximum Object : 0.01K / 0.22K / 22.88K OBJS ACTIVE USE OBJ SIZE SLABS OBJ/SLAB CACHE SIZE NAME 8433792 8349318 98% 0.06K 131778 64 527112K pid 4253942 4250995 99% 0.09K 92477 46 369908K anon_vma 3011640 2929311 97% 0.20K 150582 20 602328K vm_area_struct 2994831 2908345 97% 0.19K 142611 21 570444K dentry 2068096 2033715 98% 0.03K 16157 128 64628K kmalloc-32 1953024 1932838 98% 0.02K 7629 256 30516K kmalloc-16 1820128 1618465 88% 0.25K 113758 16 455032K filp 1149438 1149438 100% 0.04K 11269 102 45076K pde_opener 1014336 891822 87% 0.06K 15849 64 63396K kmalloc-64 954051 953969 99% 0.19K 45431 21 181724K cred_jar 757224 752612 99% 0.10K 19416 39 77664K buffer_head 627368 627368 100% 0.07K 11203 56 44812K eventpoll_pwq 564900 535453 94% 0.09K 13450 42 53800K kmalloc-96 372690 336229 90% 0.13K 12423 30 49692K kernfs_node_cache 362528 362365 99% 0.12K 11329 32 45316K seq_file 329937 327195 99% 1.06K 21455 30 686560K signal_cache task_struct is also normally very high and is normally about 1.5GB before I have to reboot. A couple of questions: 1) How do I work out which SLAB caches contain the unreclaimable RAM? 2) Is there anything else I can do to work out why the RAM is unreclaimable?
user3421823 (131 rep)
Jul 30, 2018, 11:09 AM • Last activity: Jun 10, 2025, 07:03 AM
1 votes
2 answers
2370 views
Estimate RAM usage information of an embedded device
I'm monitoring the performance of an ARM-based embedded device which runs poky linux distro (from Yocto project) which contains OpenEmbedded build system. I need to get the MHz (CPU cycles) consumption and the RAM used for any process that runs on the system. Though `top` utility allows me to see th...
I'm monitoring the performance of an ARM-based embedded device which runs poky linux distro (from Yocto project) which contains OpenEmbedded build system. I need to get the MHz (CPU cycles) consumption and the RAM used for any process that runs on the system. Though top utility allows me to see the CPU % used (which allows me to estimate CPU MHz in turn), it just gives the *virtual memory size (VSZ)* used by the process but no *physical memory* used. Is there a way I can get this information I need?
skrowten_hermit (791 rep)
Mar 17, 2016, 10:53 AM • Last activity: Jun 1, 2025, 02:06 AM
2 votes
1 answers
2498 views
How to use memmap with U-Boot?
I'll like to reserved the first 2 GB to the RAM because my hardware write in this position to the memory RAM and I need to the kernel don't touch this part to the memory. I read to use this option need launch the order *memmap* in the bootloader and the bootloader to I use is U-Boot because I'm dess...
I'll like to reserved the first 2 GB to the RAM because my hardware write in this position to the memory RAM and I need to the kernel don't touch this part to the memory. I read to use this option need launch the order *memmap* in the bootloader and the bootloader to I use is U-Boot because I'm dessing to Driver-Kernel in Yocto OS. I read this to example to use the *memmap*: memmap=nn[KMG]$ss[KMG] [KNL,ACPI] Mark specific memory as reserved. Region of memory to be reserved is from ss to ss+nn. Example: Exclude memory from 0x18690000-0x1869ffff memmap=64K$0x18690000 or memmap=0x10000$0x18690000 Some bootloaders may need an escape character before '$', like Grub2, otherwise '$' and the following number will be eaten. And I don't know to use in this case, thankyou EDIT: New question I write this option in the U-Boot, using memmap=2G$0x00000000 and memmap=7fffffff$0x00000000, don't return exception, I guess I write this correctly but in *cat / proc / iomem* I do not see anything that tells me this memory is reserved for memory. Would you need to modify .dtb?
Daniel (51 rep)
Sep 25, 2018, 09:40 AM • Last activity: May 28, 2025, 07:06 PM
4 votes
2 answers
3265 views
Limiting users ram with cgroups not working (for me)
I registred because I didn't manage running cgroups with several tutorials/comments/whatever you find on google. I want to limit the amount of ram a specifix user may use. Internet says "cgroups". My testserver is running Ubuntu 14.04. You can divide the mentioned tutorials in two categories. Direct...
I registred because I didn't manage running cgroups with several tutorials/comments/whatever you find on google. I want to limit the amount of ram a specifix user may use. Internet says "cgroups". My testserver is running Ubuntu 14.04. You can divide the mentioned tutorials in two categories. Directly set limits using echo and use specific config. Neither is working for me. **Setting Limits using echo** cgcreate -g cpu,cpuacct,...:/my_group finishes without any notices. When I try to run echo 100M > memory.limit_in_bytes it just says "not permitted" even when using sudo. I don't even reach any point of limiting another user. **Setting limits using config** I read about two config files. So here are my config files: *cgconfig.conf* mount { memory = /cgroup/memory; } group limit_grp { memory { memory.limit_in_bytes=100M; memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes=125M; } } *cgrules.conf* testuser memory limit_grp When I run cgconfigparser -l /etc/cgconfig.conf it mounts to systemd. Now I log on with testuser, run an memory intense task - and it runs without caring about my limit. I tried rebooting, nothing changed. Even some strange attempts using kernel config didn't work. I'm new to cgroups and didn't expect it to be that complicated. I'd appreciate any suggestions to my topic. Thank you in advance!
darkspirit510 (41 rep)
Jun 25, 2016, 05:47 PM • Last activity: May 14, 2025, 12:07 PM
2 votes
2 answers
4374 views
Booting kernel (FIT image) with no rootfs
An embedded Linux device I am working with has the following kernel parameter: `root=/dev/ram0` Additionally, the kernel image is bundled together with an initrd and device tree to make a *flattened image tree*, or [FIT][1] image. When fully booted the device does not have persistent storage. That i...
An embedded Linux device I am working with has the following kernel parameter: root=/dev/ram0 Additionally, the kernel image is bundled together with an initrd and device tree to make a *flattened image tree*, or FIT image. When fully booted the device does not have persistent storage. That is, anything written to the file system is completely volatile. Considering the root= parameter passed to the kernel, this is not surprising. My questions is: How does this work? - I do know that Uboot copies the kernel into ram and executes it with a bootm command, but where do the filesystem files come from? Are they contained within the initrd? My understanding of an initrd is that it is a temporary construct. If so, it would be an offset into FIT image blob. So, how is just passing root=/dev/ram0 sufficient for the kernel to know where its file system is? - Does the kernel perform introspection and read the FIT image's header to determine placement of constituent components? - How are file system changes supported inside a FIT image considering it will be packed together with both the kernel and device tree blob?
sherrellbc (2601 rep)
Jun 28, 2016, 05:49 PM • Last activity: Apr 27, 2025, 02:04 PM
1 votes
0 answers
66 views
How do i list all consuming program by cpu, memory
I want to list all CPU- and memory-consuming programs. There are a bunch of `top` commands and questions about this, but none of them list programs properly. For example, a Python web service could spawn multiple processes. I want to sum all of them if they originate from the same path or program ID...
I want to list all CPU- and memory-consuming programs. There are a bunch of top commands and questions about this, but none of them list programs properly. For example, a Python web service could spawn multiple processes. I want to sum all of them if they originate from the same path or program ID. Is there a way to group and list them by ppid or path?
TomSawyer (133 rep)
Jan 31, 2023, 03:42 AM • Last activity: Mar 17, 2025, 01:30 PM
2 votes
0 answers
618 views
memtester error when testing two RAM memory cards together but successful test on each one
I have bought a new 8GB memory ram with the same part number as the one my computer already has. After mounting the new memory, I see that Ubuntu has detected it and that the system has 16 GB of RAM. The bad part is that when I run `memtester 5G 2` I get lots of errors in all comparisons (random val...
I have bought a new 8GB memory ram with the same part number as the one my computer already has. After mounting the new memory, I see that Ubuntu has detected it and that the system has 16 GB of RAM. The bad part is that when I run memtester 5G 2 I get lots of errors in all comparisons (random value, xor, sub, div....). However, when I leave only one of the 8GB RAM memory cards the memtester 5G 2 returns ok for all fields and for both cards (obviously tested with only one at a time mounted in the pc). Why do you think this is happening? Is it just that one is older and too different than the other one? Both have the same Samsung part number but bought about 6 years apart. Do you think this will be fixed if I buy another 8GB of the new one? **Update** I have tried, as mentioned in the commentes, if the problem was the slot by running the same tests that were successfull for each RAM in the slot 1 but in slot 2. These test failed for both RAMs in slot 2 (when slot 1 was empty). I have decided to buy a 16GB RAM and mount it in slot 1.
apalomer (121 rep)
Jul 5, 2021, 06:31 PM • Last activity: Mar 17, 2025, 11:02 AM
1 votes
0 answers
85 views
When does Unified Memory Access (UMA) grow with demand?
My computer does not scale the UMA when it is maxed out. My laptop has an integrated GPU (iGPU), 32 GB of RAM, and it makes use of UMA. Its UEFI firmware has the following possibilities to configure the UMA: - auto (default, used during test) - 512 MB - 1 GB - 2 GB - 4 GB - 8 GB - 16 GB I start a ga...
My computer does not scale the UMA when it is maxed out. My laptop has an integrated GPU (iGPU), 32 GB of RAM, and it makes use of UMA. Its UEFI firmware has the following possibilities to configure the UMA: - auto (default, used during test) - 512 MB - 1 GB - 2 GB - 4 GB - 8 GB - 16 GB I start a game (via steam + proton) and it runs poorly. I monitor the system via nvtop, and see the GPU is maxed out, both on VRAM and 100% load. Interestingly, the VRAM is indicated to be 512 MB. I had hoped it would automatically scale with demand, given that is the intended use with UMA. After manually setting the UMA to 8 GB VRAM, the game performs much better and uses 5 GB. I see this as a bug or a missing feature. Could it be due to the motherboard firmware? Do I have to configure Wayland in a certain way? Is it up to the program (proton/the game) to demand for UMA scaling? Do I need to activate a kernel module/set a kernel argument? **System info** Distro: NixOS 24.11 (Vicuna) Kernel: 6.6.67 RAM: 31 GB GPU Driver: 4.6 Mesa 24.2.6 GPU: AMD Radeon (radeonsi, renoir, LLVM 18.1.8, DRM 3.54, 6.6.67) CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4700U with Radeon Graphics
AlexLoss (183 rep)
Jan 27, 2025, 10:56 AM • Last activity: Jan 27, 2025, 12:51 PM
0 votes
0 answers
20 views
How to measure ram usage of a command
How to measure the memory usage of a running command in terminal? Does `/usr/bin/time -v` measure the RAM usage of a command?
How to measure the memory usage of a running command in terminal? Does /usr/bin/time -v measure the RAM usage of a command?
MobiusT (1 rep)
Jan 18, 2025, 03:53 PM
5 votes
2 answers
3843 views
Is ZFS safer with non-ECC RAM if you disable checksums?
I've heard about the Scrub of Death. However one can disable checksumming in ZFS datasets. If so, will that make the situation safer for a system that's not using ECC RAM? I'm not thinking of a NAS or anything like that - more of a workstation deployment with a single drive just to use the ZFS volum...
I've heard about the Scrub of Death. However one can disable checksumming in ZFS datasets. If so, will that make the situation safer for a system that's not using ECC RAM? I'm not thinking of a NAS or anything like that - more of a workstation deployment with a single drive just to use the ZFS volume management and snapshots (and no need for fsck) benefits. I don't want to use redundancy even. Will a bad memory location still completely destroy my storage if I disable ZFS checksums?
unfa (1825 rep)
Dec 14, 2017, 10:38 PM • Last activity: Jan 17, 2025, 08:35 AM
3 votes
1 answers
1043 views
Swap on video ram in a VM
I have a very small VM running in a cloud with only 512 MB ram. I read, it is possible to use the video card as swap as descriped [here][1]: > Graphics cards contain a lot of very fast RAM, typically between 64 and 512 MB. With Linux, it's possible to use it as swap space, or even as RAM disk. Is it...
I have a very small VM running in a cloud with only 512 MB ram. I read, it is possible to use the video card as swap as descriped here : > Graphics cards contain a lot of very fast RAM, typically between 64 and 512 MB. With Linux, it's possible to use it as swap space, or even as RAM disk. Is it possible to use the virtual video card inside a VM also? So I could use more ram than I actually have to pay for? lspci -v output for the virtual video card: 00:0f.0 VGA compatible controller: VMware SVGA II Adapter (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: VMware SVGA II Adapter Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- SERR- Kernel driver in use: vmwgfx
rubo77 (30435 rep)
Jun 8, 2014, 11:04 PM • Last activity: Jan 7, 2025, 04:05 PM
16 votes
2 answers
13344 views
How to make tmpfs to use only the physical RAM and not the swap?
How to be sure that a `tmpfs` filesystem can only deal with physical and it's not using a swap partition on disk? Since I have a slow HDD and a fast RAM, I would like, at least, giving higher priority to the RAM usage for `swap` and `tmpfs` or disabling the disk usage for `tmpfs` related mount point...
How to be sure that a tmpfs filesystem can only deal with physical and it's not using a swap partition on disk? Since I have a slow HDD and a fast RAM, I would like, at least, giving higher priority to the RAM usage for swap and tmpfs or disabling the disk usage for tmpfs related mount points.
user1717079 (485 rep)
Oct 10, 2012, 03:36 PM • Last activity: Nov 15, 2024, 07:47 PM
0 votes
1 answers
60 views
Can I install Linux on the drive I booted the installer from, if the installer is loaded into RAM?
I'd like to install HoloISO (a Linux distro based on SteamOS) to a USB drive, as a full install. I've read from various sources, including [this question][1], that to install Linux on to a USB drive, you need two USB drives - a source drive, to boot the installer from; and a target drive to install...
I'd like to install HoloISO (a Linux distro based on SteamOS) to a USB drive, as a full install. I've read from various sources, including this question , that to install Linux on to a USB drive, you need two USB drives - a source drive, to boot the installer from; and a target drive to install to - because a drive cannot install to itself. Quoting this answer to this question : > You can install from disk, but the installation can't repartition the disk or overwrite the partition containing the image from which you install. However, I know that HoloISO allows you to load the installer entirely into your system's RAM - hence you can disconnect the source drive after fully loading the installer. Therefore, my question is: can I boot from my source drive, then disconnect the drive after loading the installer entirely into RAM, then re-insert the source drive and install the distro to the drive (essentially repurposing it to become the target drive)? Is this possible? **P.S.** I've said "Linux" not "HoloISO" in the question title, as I'd like to know about any Linux distribution that allows the installer to be loaded into RAM. Also, my question is not a duplicate of the question I linked above (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/61700/can-i-install-a-distro-booted-from-a-drive-to-the-same-drive) , as that question asks about USB linux installations in general - I'm asking *specifically* about installers that have been *loaded entirely into RAM*.
Noah Domingues (103 rep)
Nov 2, 2024, 01:16 PM • Last activity: Nov 2, 2024, 01:44 PM
-1 votes
1 answers
187 views
How to get the physical address of a file in RAM?
I have found a couple of related posts: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/279729/how-to-see-information-inside-inode-data-structure https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/581323/is-it-possible-to-find-the-physical-address-of-a-file-in-disk But nothing quite answers my question. I have a pro...
I have found a couple of related posts: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/279729/how-to-see-information-inside-inode-data-structure https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/581323/is-it-possible-to-find-the-physical-address-of-a-file-in-disk But nothing quite answers my question. I have a process which continuously reads a file and I would like to get the physical address of the file it is continuously reading. I know which file it is reading. The process in question does not use mmap. How can I get the physical address of that file? I presume I can get its address in RAM. Preferably, if possible, using cmd line utilities instead of having to write a C app. The process in question: int main(void) { int iFd = open("/some/path/file.txt",O_RDWR); if (iFd /maps 555fa58000-555fa59000 r-xp 00000000 b3:02 34817 /some/path/myProcess 555fa68000-555fa69000 r--p 00000000 b3:02 34817 /some/path/myProcess 555fa69000-555fa6a000 rw-p 00001000 b3:02 34817 /some/path/myProcess 7fb3970000-7fb3ac3000 r-xp 00000000 b3:02 786 /lib/libc-2.31.so 7fb3ac3000-7fb3ad3000 ---p 00153000 b3:02 786 /lib/libc-2.31.so 7fb3ad3000-7fb3ad6000 r--p 00153000 b3:02 786 /lib/libc-2.31.so 7fb3ad6000-7fb3ad9000 rw-p 00156000 b3:02 786 /lib/libc-2.31.so 7fb3ad9000-7fb3adc000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fb3adc000-7fb3afd000 r-xp 00000000 b3:02 778 /lib/ld-2.31.so 7fb3b04000-7fb3b06000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fb3b0a000-7fb3b0b000 r--p 00000000 00:00 0 [vvar] 7fb3b0b000-7fb3b0c000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso] 7fb3b0c000-7fb3b0d000 r--p 00020000 b3:02 778 /lib/ld-2.31.so 7fb3b0d000-7fb3b0f000 rw-p 00021000 b3:02 778 /lib/ld-2.31.so 7ff5eb9000-7ff5eda000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack]
traducerad (169 rep)
Oct 20, 2024, 05:45 PM • Last activity: Oct 21, 2024, 04:32 AM
2 votes
1 answers
559 views
Linux OS does not see all the RAM allocated to the VM by Proxmox
I recently added a new VM in ProxMox for various web services. I originally allocated a minimum of 8GB of RAM with ballooning available to 16 GB. All seemed to be well until I tried installing Collabora, when the VM basically locked up for several hours. * Looking at ProxMox, it was using 104% of th...
I recently added a new VM in ProxMox for various web services. I originally allocated a minimum of 8GB of RAM with ballooning available to 16 GB. All seemed to be well until I tried installing Collabora, when the VM basically locked up for several hours. * Looking at ProxMox, it was using 104% of the allocated processor time for that whole time, but only 5% of the allocated RAM. * When I ran the free --mega command on the VM, it told me that there is only 938 **MB** *total* RAM in the system.
-shellsession
    $ free --mega
                   total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
    Mem:             938         715          99          71         350         223
    Swap:           1022         672         349
I have way more than enough RAM in the bare metal server (120 GB) to allocate 8/16 GB of RAM to this VM, but the Debian OS installed in the VM only sees 938 MB. This is not a problem with any of the other VMs I have, including the other Debian VM I spun up the same day. I have tried disabling the ballooning, and even reducing the RAM to 4 GB to see if it will shake something loose, but I never get a different amount of RAM from free, and the memory usage graph never, ever goes above the 900 MB area: Memory Usage Graph Everything I find when I search for issues are about VMs trying to use too much RAM or maxing out the RAM. I can't find anything about the guest OS not seeing 95% of the RAM. Does anyone have any ideas?
Hubert Oliver (31 rep)
Sep 11, 2024, 01:08 AM • Last activity: Oct 15, 2024, 03:51 AM
4 votes
3 answers
2133 views
Loading a large Linux distribution such as Ubuntu into mapped partitions on RAM such as DDR4
Is there any way of booting from SSD/USB/NVMe/eMMC to have a Linux OS, such as Ubuntu, plus applications, services and containers load entirely into partitions created in RAM such as DDR3 or DDR4. This should ideally allow for use of other partitions, on say SSD or HDD for file storage regardless of...
Is there any way of booting from SSD/USB/NVMe/eMMC to have a Linux OS, such as Ubuntu, plus applications, services and containers load entirely into partitions created in RAM such as DDR3 or DDR4. This should ideally allow for use of other partitions, on say SSD or HDD for file storage regardless of which OS loads, probably FAT32 or exFAT for cross-OS support. This is because even large Linux distributions use just a few units or tens of gigabytes, and many users want to use the same hardware for lots of distributions, e.g. home entertainment, software development, gaming, media production, office productivity, where users could select their environment from say a boot-loader or different USB keys, and run that environment entirely in RAM where user files reside on SSDs or HDDs, and there is a shut-down process, manual procedure or automated syncing of files in RAM archiving back to the original hard-drive/USB, for the next boot. For example, you could have a customised Steam-based OS for gaming, switching to a media-streaming OS for relaxation or parties, switching to a office productivity OS and then an Education OS, or Webserver OS, from either USB keys or SSD partitions or similar, sharing user folders among different volatile-to-non-volatile loads of differing OSs, archiving back to original drives or keys. A large cheap RAID array or single SSD could function to store files such as games, files, media, but utilising the RAM for core OS, application, library and code and services etc. Load times would increase but the OS, applications, libraries, services and databases, containers, plus gaming and media production speeds could be improved utilising lots of RAM and cheap USB loaders/archives or SSD rather than having to fork out on the cost of a large SSD or NVMe drive to accommodate those needs, which would load faster but be less responsive than loading the OS and apps into RAM. The ability to run entire drive in RAM is also important in server scenarios especially databases which are not entirely suited to SSDs and more suited to RAM in terms of seek times, read and write times, bandwidth and numbers of rewrites and failures. For example, run a Linux Server OS including a Docker container of databases, server, code, libraries etc on one or more RAM partitions, utilising other drives for user files. Also RAM swap/working folder areas would be useful in backup or media production scenarios also, to reduce the time of archiving. Many users are content with current bus speeds, but in professional and server and gaming and customisation markets the ability to a couple a fast CPU/GPU to OS file/service elements loaded into RAM would be very advantageous. The idea came from a few 3rd party Windows software solutions which can create mapped partitions on RAM, archiving bakc manual to origin drive folders, also the Hyperdrive from years ago which used a PCI card and DDR(2?) memory as a recognizable internal hard drive. The idea could be applied to Linux kernels, especially in the movement from HDD to SDD to PCIe, go one step further to reduce complexity and potentially increase security of running certain functions or the entire OS from RAM. An additional option could be to have a tiny NAND flash boot load in network scenarios for servers not using any HD but massive RAM arrays for volatile only storage, using external storage for backups/snapshots and boot files, or perhaps a remote network boot to load the OS from the cloud into RAM, archiving to another cloud. 6Gb/s on SATA3 for user files such as media, plus 25Gb/s from PC4-25600 for OS/libraries/apps/containers etc. Power supplies in most modern grids are consistent enough in nearly all scenarios, where UPSs or standard drives could be used in less developed electricity grids, and mobile situations. Comments welcome.
SouthWalesMale (41 rep)
Nov 6, 2020, 03:20 PM • Last activity: Sep 12, 2024, 05:02 AM
1 votes
2 answers
2332 views
Is increasing the max_pool_percent parameter for zswap a smart idea to combine concepts of zram and zswap to increase memory and decrease disk usage?
I don't know if I'm missing something, but please take this with a grain of salt. So, zram is used to reduce I/O operations on the disk by making a swap on the memory which eliminates system freezes for users with HDDs and also 'increasing' the amount of data you can put on the memory. But the downs...
I don't know if I'm missing something, but please take this with a grain of salt. So, zram is used to reduce I/O operations on the disk by making a swap on the memory which eliminates system freezes for users with HDDs and also 'increasing' the amount of data you can put on the memory. But the downsides is that once you run out of this swap, you will lose the speed advantage and have to swap to the HDD normally which could also swap out active pages instead of sending off LRU (least recently used) data. So it just works blindlessly by trying to compress everything thrown at it. However, zswap tries to be smarter and does what zram does but requires more I/O activity. It caches the pages that are to be swapped and once the memory pool is full it swaps the least recently used pages. But it sends incompressible data straight to the disk swap. Now here's the question, hear me out. Wouldn't increasing the memory pool size of zswap make it equivalent to zram by adding much more available space to the RAM by allowing the RAM pool to compress much more data and be able to accept more pages before getting exhausted WHILE ALSO keeping the smart characteristics of zswap like disk caching and swapping out LRU pages? Wouldn't this be the best of both worlds? The only downside of this is that it'd still send off incompressible data to the disk which results in disk activity. I'm not sure about this but wouldn't decreasing swappiness to 1 get rid of this issue? Or does swappiness only affect inactive pages but not pages that zswap wasn't able to compress? If so, can anybody suggest a solution to this?
alex (11 rep)
Jun 22, 2022, 01:26 PM • Last activity: Jul 8, 2024, 02:39 AM
0 votes
0 answers
168 views
copy Linux EXT filesystem use dd
I used binwalk to scan firmware image, uncompressed & raw RAM dump. When scan for signatures with -I flag there is reference to Linux EXT filesystem: DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... 2148245 0x20C795 Linux EXT fi...
I used binwalk to scan firmware image, uncompressed & raw RAM dump. When scan for signatures with -I flag there is reference to Linux EXT filesystem: DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... ... 2148245 0x20C795 Linux EXT filesystem, blocks count: 1048741, image size: 1073910784, invalid state invalid error behavior invalid major revision rev 611745794.9334, ext2 filesystem data (mounted or unclean), UUID=a200288c-6200-14af-a200-2c8c62006200, volume name "¢" I want extract that filesystem use dd command: dd if=image.out of=ext2-filesystem bs=1 skip=2148245 count=1048741 On output I got file 1,0 MiB (1 048 741 bytes). I'm not sure that this is correct result, the file is too small. What should be the correct command for this? EDIT: GNU Coreutils, $ dd --version dd (coreutils) 8.32
minto (575 rep)
Jul 4, 2024, 12:14 AM • Last activity: Jul 4, 2024, 11:07 AM
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RAM size devides by 2
I have home physical server for nextcloud, some sites, etc. I build it 2 years ago and only recently noticed that instead of 16GB, only 8 are displayed and working. Used this command for check: ```wget -qO- bench.sh | bash``` At the same time, there are 16 physically. I thought it was a broken RAM (...
I have home physical server for nextcloud, some sites, etc. I build it 2 years ago and only recently noticed that instead of 16GB, only 8 are displayed and working. Used this command for check:
-qO- bench.sh | bash
At the same time, there are 16 physically. I thought it was a broken RAM (amd radeon), so today I bought a new 32 GB kingston. And that's what I see: Only 16gb shown So I decided to change slots (was 2 4, now 1 3) and it still the same. Found this command:
sudo dmidecode --type 17
And it says that system can see 32 gb. What should I do to fix it? I have 64bit system: hostnamectl Result of dmidecode:
# dmidecode 3.3
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.2.0 present.

Handle 0x0010, DMI type 17, 84 bytes
Memory Device
        Array Handle: 0x0009
        Error Information Handle: 0x000F
        Total Width: 64 bits
        Data Width: 64 bits
        Size: 16 GB
        Form Factor: DIMM
        Set: None
        Locator: DIMM 0
        Bank Locator: P0 CHANNEL A
        Type: DDR4
        Type Detail: Synchronous Unbuffered (Unregistered)
        Speed: 2400 MT/s
        Manufacturer: Kingston
        Serial Number: 254F4E2E
        Asset Tag: Not Specified
        Part Number: KHX2666C13/16GX
        Rank: 2
        Configured Memory Speed: 2400 MT/s
        Minimum Voltage: 1.2 V
        Maximum Voltage: 1.2 V
        Configured Voltage: 1.2 V
        Memory Technology: 
        Memory Operating Mode Capability: None
        Firmware Version: Unknown
        Module Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Module Product ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Product ID: Unknown
        Non-Volatile Size: None
        Volatile Size: None
        Cache Size: None
        Logical Size: None

Handle 0x0013, DMI type 17, 84 bytes
Memory Device
        Array Handle: 0x0009
        Error Information Handle: 0x0012
        Total Width: Unknown
        Data Width: Unknown
        Size: No Module Installed
        Form Factor: Unknown
        Set: None
        Locator: DIMM 1
        Bank Locator: P0 CHANNEL A
        Type: Unknown
        Type Detail: Unknown
        Speed: Unknown
        Manufacturer: Unknown
        Serial Number: Unknown
        Asset Tag: Not Specified
        Part Number: Unknown
        Rank: Unknown
        Configured Memory Speed: Unknown
        Minimum Voltage: Unknown
        Maximum Voltage: Unknown
        Configured Voltage: Unknown
        Memory Technology: 
        Memory Operating Mode Capability: None
        Firmware Version: Unknown
        Module Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Module Product ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Product ID: Unknown
        Non-Volatile Size: None
        Volatile Size: None
        Cache Size: None
        Logical Size: None

Handle 0x0015, DMI type 17, 84 bytes
Memory Device
        Array Handle: 0x0009
        Error Information Handle: 0x0014
        Total Width: 64 bits
        Data Width: 64 bits
        Size: 16 GB
        Form Factor: DIMM
        Set: None
        Locator: DIMM 0
        Bank Locator: P0 CHANNEL B
        Type: DDR4
        Type Detail: Synchronous Unbuffered (Unregistered)
        Speed: 2400 MT/s
        Manufacturer: Kingston
        Serial Number: 254F529A
        Asset Tag: Not Specified
        Part Number: KHX2666C13/16GX
        Rank: 2
        Configured Memory Speed: 2400 MT/s
        Minimum Voltage: 1.2 V
        Maximum Voltage: 1.2 V
        Configured Voltage: 1.2 V
        Memory Technology: 
        Memory Operating Mode Capability: None
        Firmware Version: Unknown
        Module Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Module Product ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Product ID: Unknown
        Non-Volatile Size: None
        Volatile Size: None
        Cache Size: None
        Logical Size: None

Handle 0x0018, DMI type 17, 84 bytes
Memory Device
        Array Handle: 0x0009
        Error Information Handle: 0x0017
        Total Width: Unknown
        Data Width: Unknown
        Size: No Module Installed
        Form Factor: Unknown
        Set: None
        Locator: DIMM 1
        Bank Locator: P0 CHANNEL B
        Type: Unknown
        Type Detail: Unknown
        Speed: Unknown
        Manufacturer: Unknown
        Serial Number: Unknown
        Asset Tag: Not Specified
        Part Number: Unknown
        Rank: Unknown
        Configured Memory Speed: Unknown
        Minimum Voltage: Unknown
        Maximum Voltage: Unknown
        Configured Voltage: Unknown
        Memory Technology: 
        Memory Operating Mode Capability: None
        Firmware Version: Unknown
        Module Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Module Product ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Manufacturer ID: Unknown
        Memory Subsystem Controller Product ID: Unknown
        Non-Volatile Size: None
        Volatile Size: None
        Cache Size: None
        Logical Size: None
MrUssy (1 rep)
Jul 2, 2024, 12:29 PM
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