Do I need more RAM?

[Mark Phillips]

LOL.....Thanks to everyone for helping me do a better job of phrasing my
question....;-)  and for your good suggestions.

I agree, one can always use more
(clean) air
FOOD
BEER (wine for some)
RAM, CPU,s, (but maybe not ROM)

I should have said...."Given a miniscule budget with no extra cash laying
around (other than in my pocket or the newspaper class teacher's pocket), I
am faced with two options to spend money.
A - $50/year for an additional 2GB of disk space, which is enough for the
next year or so, and we need that disk space for articles and photos.
B - $109/year for 8GB of additional disk space (don't need all that now, but
will grow into it), 180 MB of RAM (do I really need it?) and additional
bandwidth that I don't need."
Both amounts are due up front - ie discounted over the normal monthly cost
for up front payment and non-profit status.

The minimum RAM requirement (from the documentation) for a Plone site is
512MB. But I have run many small sites on less and they work just fine. This
one is a case in point.

The results of free -t:

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        368836     363408       5428          0      24248      51712
-/+ buffers/cache:     287448      81388
Swap:       524280      47180     477100
Total:      893116     410588     482528

Can someone help me interpret these numbers? Based on "The "-/+
buffers/cache:" line will tell you how much memory the system is
taking because nobody else is using it." I would conclude that the OS (ie
the "system") as opposed to the application is using most of the memory
because it can, so the app is not being starved. But I can argue the other
way as well, so I am a little lost.

For what it is worth, Plone/Zope are Python beasts. Is there a way to see if
any of the application is in swap versus RAM? The system does not have a
noticeable lag when pages are accessed - it is not instantaneous, but faster
than my Google apps account.  ;-)

Thanks!

Mark

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:54 AM, kitepilot at kitepilot.com <
kitepilot at kitepilot.com> wrote:

> Do I need more air?
> Do I need more FOOD?
> Do I need MORE BEER!!!
>
> Give more, MORE, MOOOREEEE!!!!
> Gawd, I need more Prozac too...   :)
>
> You will never have too much memory, or extrapolating to aviation:
> The only time I have too much fuel is when the airplane is on fire...  ;-)
>
> top alone will only hand you part of the picture.
> Try:
> free -t
> Look at the line:
>  -/+ buffers/cache: XXXX
>
> Memory is used by buffers that are there only for efficiency, but will be
> returned to the system on demand.  Sometimes very little used stuff will go
> to swap, and adding memory will not really help anything (and it won't hurt
> anything either, other than your checkbook)
>
> The "-/+ buffers/cache:" line will tell you how much memory the system is
> taking because nobody else is using it.
> YMMV...
> ET
>
> PS: And that "airplane on fire" wisdom is not always true, but works for
> novice pilots...
> Or:
> My job is not to teach how to fly.
> My job is to help you stay alive while you learn...  :)
>
>
>
>
>
> Mark Phillips writes:
>
> > I have a Zope/Plone 2.5 web site running on Debian on a Linode virtual
> host.
> > It has grown over the last few years, and now I need to add some more
> disk
> > space. The site is for a school newspaper, so from August - June,
> students
> > add news articles and photos.
> >
> > I was also looking at the output of top, and perhaps I need more RAM as
> > well? Top shows I have only 5 MB free out of 368 MB of total RAM, but I
> am
> > only using 9% of my swap, so perhaps I don't need more RAM. The site does
> > not seem slow.
> >
> > Tasks:  69 total,   1 running,  68 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> > Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,
> > 0.0%st
> > Mem:    368836k total,   363364k used,     5472k free,     8316k buffers
> > Swap:   524280k total,    46716k used,   477564k free,    67436k cached
> >
> > Thanks for any suggestions you may have.
> >
> > Mark
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