[K12OSN] bottleneck question

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 20:08, Liam Marshall wrote:

> >
> >If you are using a substantial amount of swap (see top) or it is
> >very active (do a 'vmstat 5' and watch when the system is busy)
> >then adding memory will help a lot.  If normal activity doesn't
> >use swap, adding RAM will still help but won't make a big difference.
> >  
> >
> 
> How much is alot?  After everyone was in the app texteditor, cpu usage 
> was 39% , free memory was 130 MB out of 2 GB, and vmstat 5 revealed  
> over 60 Mb used in cache, I think

It is the activity more than the amount that will slow you
down - loaded but inactive programs that are paged out
don't hurt much.  Do a 'vmstat 5' so you see snapshots
every 5 seconds and if the 'si' and 'so' numbers show
paging activity in normal operation then RAM will help.

---
   Les Mikesell
     les at futuresource.com