[K12OSN] bottleneck question

[Liam Marshall]

Les Mikesell wrote:

>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.
>
>  
>


thanks for the input,  but I just don't  no how to interpret  what you 
said.  I will check to si and so numbers, but how do I interpret them?