I have a dedicated server that has three websites, two of which use a MySQL database. The entire server will probably only receive about 50 visitors per day and doesn't serve a lot of images. It is running Red Hat 7.2 and has a 500 MHz processor, 5 GB hard drive, and 32 MBs of RAM.

The server normally uses about 23 MBs and has 5 MBs free. Is this OK to get by on? I'm paying next to nothing for the server and I primarily got it to learn how to administer a server. For some reason, my web host said that I can't add more RAM to the server because it was a special (I'm on a 12 month contract with 11 months to go). From looking at the info below can somebody tell me if I really need more RAM or is it OK the way it is?

2:09pm up 2:25, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
47 processes: 45 sleeping, 1 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.3% user, 0.1% system, 0.0% nice, 99.4% idle
Mem: 28780K av, 23608K used, 5172K free, 48K shrd, 3676K buff
Swap: 522104K av, 3116K used, 518988K free 7476K cached

What would be a good % of RAM being used to the total amount available on average?

Can some of you post some examples of what comes up when running TOP?


JTM

Even on servers with like 1gb ram i find that it rarely has much in the "free" section of that but there is quite a lot on buff and cached, so I think you can get by on the 32mbs ram with your current usage.

That is good to hear. It seems like there's an awful lot of processes running on my server when it doesn't really have any visitors to it besides myself. Can somebody tell me if I can eliminate some of them permantly?

Here are the results when running TOP:


3:12pm up 3:28, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
54 processes: 45 sleeping, 1 running, 1 zombie, 7 stopped
CPU states: 0.3% user, 0.3% system, 0.0% nice, 99.2% idle
Mem: 28780K av, 23060K used, 5720K free, 48K shrd, 2604K buff
Swap: 522104K av, 5808K used, 516296K free 6956K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
2448 root 14 0 1052 1052 836 R 0.5 3.6 0:07 top
1689 root 13 0 1768 1728 1388 S 0.1 6.0 0:06 sshd
1 root 8 0 104 52 52 S 0.0 0.1 0:05 init
2 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd
3 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kapm-idled
4 root 19 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
5 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kswapd
6 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kreclaimd
7 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 bdflush
8 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kupdated
9 root -1 -20 0 0 0 SW< 0.0 0.0 0:00 mdrecoveryd
13 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kjournald
88 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 khubd
180 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kjournald
605 root 9 0 212 156 156 S 0.0 0.5 0:00 syslogd
610 root 9 0 652 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 klogd
684 root 9 0 176 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 safe_mysqld
764 mysql 9 0 484 28 28 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mysqld
782 root 8 0 60 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 apmd
821 mysql 9 0 484 28 28 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mysqld
822 mysql 9 0 484 28 28 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mysqld
873 root 9 0 448 328 288 S 0.0 1.1 0:00 xinetd
896 root 9 0 1080 652 624 S 0.0 2.2 0:00 httpd
912 nobody 9 0 2012 1652 1516 S 0.0 5.7 0:00 httpd
913 nobody 9 0 2024 1700 1536 S 0.0 5.9 0:00 httpd
914 nobody 9 0 2028 1712 1556 S 0.0 5.9 0:00 httpd
915 nobody 9 0 1996 1644 1500 S 0.0 5.7 0:00 httpd
916 nobody 9 0 2004 1648 1508 S 0.0 5.7 0:00 httpd
941 root 9 0 1156 872 612 S 0.0 3.0 0:00 sendmail
960 root 9 0 212 116 104 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 cucipop
990 root 8 0 156 108 88 S 0.0 0.3 0:00 crond
1038 daemon 9 0 100 44 44 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 atd
1048 root 8 0 4456 3464 2464 S 0.0 12.0 0:01 miniserv.pl
1052 root 9 0 64 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
1053 root 9 0 64 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
1054 root 9 0 64 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
1055 root 9 0 64 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
1056 root 9 0 64 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
1057 root 9 0 64 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 mingetty
1061 nobody 9 0 2004 1696 1532 S 0.0 5.8 0:00 httpd
1113 nobody 9 0 2028 1716 1548 S 0.0 5.9 0:00 httpd
1114 nobody 9 0 1944 1580 1436 S 0.0 5.4 0:00 httpd
1115 nobody 9 0 1992 1676 1512 S 0.0 5.8 0:00 httpd
1679 root 9 0 924 876 756 S 0.0 3.0 0:01 sshd
1690 root 9 0 1368 1368 1000 S 0.0 4.7 0:00 bash
2070 root 9 0 1052 1052 836 T 0.0 3.6 0:04 top
2083 nobody 9 0 2180 1884 1720 S 0.0 6.5 0:00 httpd
2161 root 9 0 1052 1052 836 T 0.0 3.6 0:04 top
2334 root 9 0 1048 1048 836 T 0.0 3.6 0:00 top



JTM

oad average: 0.57, 0.45, 0.33
169 processes: 167 sleeping, 1 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states: 21.4% user, 2.4% system, 0.0% nice, 75.1% idle
CPU1 states: 30.3% user, 4.2% system, 0.0% nice, 64.3% idle
Mem: 1030616K av, 969688K used, 60928K free, 0K shrd, 96816K buff
Swap: 1052216K av, 104220K used, 947996K free 605084K cached

Type "free" at the command line and look at the second line how much memory is really free. Linux does not work like Windows, it uses whatever memory is available. Your system shows that you have 2604KB buffered and 6956KB cached. This is basicly also free memory.

I wouldn't worry as long as those load averages stay as low as they are now.

JD