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[GameplayWhore]

I am not allowed to access my home PC from work, sure would be fun if I could.

It's kind of cool being the only one among a company of forty thousand people who can access Youtube.

True, I only add custom repositories for software I need them for, keep it simple.

Until Arch, I took occasional risks, but I could more or less fix the situation if, say, trying to install that slightly experimental version of pidgin suddenly led to my video card melting down. D:

This is process of compiling software, you will become familiar with it.

Btw, I appreciate your clarifying remarks.

Lots of things to love about Linux, just wish accelerated video for ATI cards was better. This is why I will say again that if you are a windows gamer, stay with windows.

I think it's very weird and interesting how the shift to console gaming for a giant honking bulk of previously Windows gamers made experimenting Linux less of a terrible thing, since games have been further segmented from general purpose computing. Even the portbacks to Windows machines suffer, as they're targeted towards the nearly seven year old living room players in both performance and controls*. That said, I am still happy that I can play civ4 using wine.


* I feel your pain, KB/M-GAF

 

[peakish]

Yea this is the only reason I'm not sure about moving to Linux. I thought about dual booting two operating systems, but that's just pointless. I will at least try it out after I get my ssd.

Yeah, it's kind of why I think the oft predicted "Year of Linux on Desktop" will never come. Sure I think anyone can use it these days and perhaps even enjoy or prefer some of the ways it does things differently compared to OSX and Windows, but there's no real reason for most to use it except for novelty's sake. And then running an OS with good commercial software support easily (and completely understandable) wins out.

 

[rpg_poser]

I think it's very weird and interesting how the shift to console gaming for a giant honking bulk of previously Windows gamers made experimenting Linux less of a terrible thing, since games have been further segmented from general purpose computing. Even the portbacks to Windows machines suffer, as they're targeted towards the nearly seven year old living room players in both performance and controls*. That said, I am still happy that I can play civ4 using wine.
* I feel your pain, KB/M-GAF

That's an interesting perspective. I am PC centric due to lack of game funds, purchases are few and far between. Because of this, the games I have need to run, and they don't run well on Linux because they are windows games.
I would switch from dual boot windows/linux to 100% Linux in a hearbeat if that weren't the case. Linux in many fundamental ways is better than windows. I am stoked you can play Civ4 with Wine though, that is very cool. Here's the question though, does it run 100% perfect, like in windows?

 

[zoku88]

I pretty much play most of my PC games when I'm in my Linux OS. I only really boot into Windows for Skyrim.

For Civ V, I usually play in Vmware since wine doesn't work for anything except for the lowest settings.

For Paradox games, though, they usually work fine in wine. Football Manager runs fine as well, but it can be a pain to start up (for some reason, it seems to only start when I do stress --cpu 8...)

 

[Izick]

So I was just thinking, with the 12.4 update coming soon, how easy is updating/upgrading Ubuntu's OS version?

 

[Vanillalite]

So I was just thinking, with the 12.4 update coming soon, how easy is updating/upgrading Ubuntu's OS version?

Way easier than it use to be. It use to be sort of a broken cluster. Updating to the new versions lately though have been really smooth for me.

Literally the day it comes out just hit Alt+F2 and type...

update-manager -d

then it'll look for an OS upgrade. Just run that when it comes up, and reboot. BOOM you are upgraded to the newest version.

 

[Izick]

Way easier than it use to be. It use to be sort of a broken cluster. Updating to the new versions lately though have been really smooth for me.

Literally the day it comes out just hit Alt+F2 and type...

update-manager -d

then it'll look for an OS upgrade. Just run that when it comes up, and reboot. BOOM you are upgraded to the newest version.

Wow....that really is easy.

But you don't even really need to do that now, do you? Will Update manager find it by itself if you look?

If so, in addition to other things, I have to say, Ubuntu really does make it a lot easier for people who are used to manipulating the system through the GUI.

 

[GameplayWhore]

That's an interesting perspective. I am PC centric due to lack of game funds, purchases are few and far between. Because of this, the games I have need to run, and they don't run well on Linux because they are windows games.
I would switch from dual boot windows/linux to 100% Linux in a hearbeat if that weren't the case. Linux in many fundamental ways is better than windows. I am stoked you can play Civ4 with Wine though, that is very cool. Here's the question though, does it run 100% perfect, like in windows?

Civ4 works a little better in Linux than in Windows when I want to swap to other apps during the long, late game wait between turns.

I do get occasional crashes when using a complex mod with a supergiant world in an extra long game when I have like a hundred cities. But this may not be wine's fault.

Oh, I think I turned wonder animations off. Or were those in civ3? Either way, I don't remember if that was because of a wine stability issue or for some other reason.

 

[Massa]

Wow....that really is easy.

But you don't even really need to do that now, do you? Will Update manager find it by itself if you look?

If so, in addition to other things, I have to say, Ubuntu really does make it a lot easier for people who are used to manipulating the system through the GUI.

Yes, if you launch the update manager gui it will tell you there's a new version of Ubuntu available and ask if you want to upgrade.

 

[rpg_poser]

Wow....that really is easy.

But you don't even really need to do that now, do you? Will Update manager find it by itself if you look?

If so, in addition to other things, I have to say, Ubuntu really does make it a lot easier for people who are used to manipulating the system through the GUI.

The one thing that most folks recommend is to uninstall any proprietary drivers you have installed before upgrading to a new version. After the upgrade, you can reinstall them.

FYI - Proprietary drivers are usually video and wi-fi, the two types of hardware Linux has the most compatibility issues with.

 

[Vanillalite]

Eh I'm a decently sized PC Gamer, and Wine/VMs just sort of are a headache and a half. I just resign myself to playing that stuff in a dual boot setup in Windows.

That being said I'm a big support of the Humble Indie Bundle since they mandate Linux versions of everything. I'd say purely because of this initiative the amount of great native Linux games has increased by 1000% over the past year or two.

PS: Not related but I can't believe myself. Last night I made my 1st browser switch (for my main browser anyways I always have others installed for backup/random cases) in like 3 years last night.

 

[angelfly]

I wonder when if ever I'll make a browser switch. I've been a Mozilla/Firefox user for about 7 or 8 years now.

 

[rpg_poser]

I tried to make the switch from firefox to chrome, but flash video was causing hard reboots. I blame ATI proprietary drivers for that, though.

 

[Vanillalite]

Used FF for a bit back in it's early days, but my computer sucked to much that the RAM leaks caused me problems in Windows. So I switched over to Opera for a little while. I tried FF back out when 3 and 3.5 hit, but never made the switch. Instead I jumped on the Chrome bandwagon, and I've been riding that train ever since.

For some reason though I just of felt compelled to switch to FF when I installed the Win 8 consumer preview, and I figure I'll go with it in Linux stuff too. Plus it's usually the default over chrome(ium) anyways. I don't want to say all of the Google negativity and backlash finally got to me. Heck I could have gone srware iron. I just figured I'd try FF for a while especially now that they are on a consistent release schedule of smaller updates ala chrome.

 

[Izick]

Yes, if you launch the update manager gui it will tell you there's a new version of Ubuntu available and ask if you want to upgrade.

See, this is what I'm saying. Linux seems very overwhelming at first, but from the little I know about it from the past, having the OS and other things being able to be easily updated through a GUI is awesome.

The one thing that most folks recommend is to uninstall any proprietary drivers you have installed before upgrading to a new version. After the upgrade, you can reinstall them.

FYI - Proprietary drivers are usually video and wi-fi, the two types of hardware Linux has the most compatibility issues with.

I've already uninstalled the proprietary driver I had (ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver) because it made my PC freeze up, and made it a ton slower for some reason.

I wonder when if ever I'll make a browser switch. I've been a Mozilla/Firefox user for about 7 or 8 years now.

I tried to make the switch from firefox to chrome, but flash video was causing hard reboots. I blame ATI proprietary drivers for that, though.

Firefox is just superior to Chrome on Linux, in my opinion. Everything is about the same speed wise, but flash is a lot better, and (this is a deal breaker) you can actually make backspace "back one page" in Firefox. I was so annoyed by that at first. I know there is alt+ left arrow, but that's nowhere near as conveniant, and we're all creatures of habit anyways.

A side question:

Whenever I boot up Ubuntu, or at least usually, I usually see some graphical glitches, like a green bar, or sometimes it will pop up the black text boot for a second, then go back to the regular purple bootup. Everything is fine when I actually get to the "put in your password" screen and then on, but I was curious as to if I should be worried.

(Also, is it normal that if I have it set to password lock whenever I close my lid, then re-open, that it pops right back to where I was for a second, then pops up the enter password screen?)

 

[GameplayWhore]

Firefox is just superior to Chrome on Linux, in my opinion. Everything is about the same speed wise, but flash is a lot better, and (this is a deal breaker) you can actually make backspace "back one page" in Firefox. I was so annoyed by that at first. I know there is alt+ left arrow, but that's nowhere near as conveniant, and we're all creatures of habit anyways.

Chrome Shortcut Manager Extension. I tested it, and it's trivial to assign the backspace key to the "back" action.

A side question:

Whenever I boot up Ubuntu, or at least usually, I usually see some graphical glitches, like a green bar, or sometimes it will pop up the black text boot for a second, then go back to the regular purple bootup. Everything is fine when I actually get to the "put in your password" screen and then on, but I was curious as to if I should be worried.

(Also, is it normal that if I have it set to password lock whenever I close my lid, then re-open, that it pops right back to where I was for a second, then pops up the enter password screen?)

I've seen the former, and it sounds like the same cause could apply to the latter. Some video drivers don't instantly switch screens when working with X. It can be an annoyance, but I don't recall this sort of thing ever causing a problem.

If you're using the proprietary driver, try the other one, and vice-versa. I'd just live with it, personally.

 

[Izick]

Chrome Shortcut Manager Extension. I tested it, and it's trivial to assign the backspace key to the "back" action.






I've seen the former, and it sounds like the same cause could apply to the latter. Some video drivers don't instantly switch screens when working with X. It can be an annoyance, but I don't recall this sort of thing ever causing a problem.

If you're using the proprietary driver, try the other one, and vice-versa. I'd just live with it, personally.

It's not a big deal, I was just making sure it wasn't anything malicious.

The one ATI/AMD proprietary driver I listed slowed down my computer, especially Ubuntu's GUI for some reason, so I'm going to stick with the standard I have now.

 

[angelfly]

I've seen the former, and it sounds like the same cause could apply to the latter. Some video drivers don't instantly switch screens when working with X. It can be an annoyance, but I don't recall this sort of thing ever causing a problem.

If you're using the proprietary driver, try the other one, and vice-versa. I'd just live with it, personally.

He's either using a proprietary drivers or has KMS disabled since nouvou, radeon, and intel drivers all support KMS.

 

[Izick]

He's either using a proprietary drivers or has KMS disabled since nouvou, radeon, and intel drivers all support KMS.

Can I check this?

I'm not using a proprietary driver (anymore).

 

[angelfly]

Can I check this?

I'm not using a proprietary driver (anymore).

dmesg | grep drm

That should give you a good indication of whether KMS is enabled.

 

[Izick]

dmesg | grep drm

That should give you a good indication of whether KMS is enabled.

What do I do with that info? Do I type it into the terminal or what? (I'm sorry , I'm a Linux newb)

 

[angelfly]

What do I do with that info? Do I type it into the terminal or what? (I'm sorry , I'm a Linux newb)

Yup just open up the terminal and type it in.

 

[Izick]

Yup just open up the terminal and type it in.

What am I looking for here exactly? Should I just post the results?

 

[angelfly]

What am I looking for here exactly? Should I just post the results?

Output similar to this:

[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[drm] nouveau 0000:05:00.0: Detected an NV50 generation card (0x094100a1)
[drm] nouveau 0000:05:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PRAMIN
[drm] nouveau 0000:05:00.0: ... appears to be valid
[drm] nouveau 0000:05:00.0: BIT BIOS found
[drm] nouveau 0000:05:00.0: Bios version 62.94.3c.00
[drm] nouveau 0000:05:00.0: TMDS table version 2.0

 

[Vanillalite]

What am I looking for here exactly? Should I just post the results?

Just post the results. Usually someone replies with wtf is going on even if I don't always follow.

 

[Izick]

Output similar to this:

That's not exactly what I have. Is it okay to post the results?

 

[Izick]

Doublepost.

[ 11.014032] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[ 11.291471] [drm] radeon defaulting to kernel modesetting.
[ 11.291477] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[ 11.320384] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (RS780 0x1002:0x9613 0x1179:0xFFB0).
[ 11.320418] [drm] register mmio base: 0xCFDF0000
[ 11.320420] [drm] register mmio size: 65536
[ 11.320732] [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=256M, BAR=256M
[ 11.320738] [drm] RAM width 32bits DDR
[ 11.329001] [drm] radeon: 256M of VRAM memory ready
[ 11.329005] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.
[ 11.329029] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 1 (10.10.2010).
[ 11.329031] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[ 11.329058] [drm] radeon: irq initialized.
[ 11.329065] [drm] GART: num cpu pages 131072, num gpu pages 131072
[ 11.406001] [drm] Loading RS780 Microcode
[ 13.965471] [drm] ring test succeeded in 1 usecs
[ 13.965729] [drm] radeon: ib pool ready.
[ 13.965824] [drm] ib test succeeded in 0 usecs
[ 13.974915] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors
[ 13.974919] [drm] Connector 0:
[ 13.974922] [drm] VGA
[ 13.974925] [drm] DDC: 0x7e40 0x7e40 0x7e44 0x7e44 0x7e48 0x7e48 0x7e4c 0x7e4c
[ 13.974927] [drm] Encoders:
[ 13.974929] [drm] CRT1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1
[ 13.974931] [drm] Connector 1:
[ 13.974933] [drm] LVDS
[ 13.974935] [drm] DDC: 0x7e50 0x7e50 0x7e54 0x7e54 0x7e58 0x7e58 0x7e5c 0x7e5c
[ 13.974937] [drm] Encoders:
[ 13.974939] [drm] LCD1: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_LVTMA
[ 13.996505] [drm] Radeon display connector VGA-1: No monitor connected or invalid EDID
[ 14.048955] [drm] Radeon display connector LVDS-1: Found valid EDID
[ 14.100065] [drm] radeon: power management initialized
[ 15.240015] [drm] fb mappable at 0xD0141000
[ 15.240020] [drm] vram apper at 0xD0000000
[ 15.240022] [drm] size 4325376
[ 15.240024] [drm] fb depth is 24
[ 15.240026] [drm] pitch is 5632
[ 15.240303] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 15.241468] fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
[ 15.241470] drm: registered panic notifier
[ 15.241481] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.10.0 20080528 for 0000:01:05.0 on minor 0
[ 15.631745] [drm:drm_mode_getfb] *ERROR* invalid framebuffer id

 

[angelfly]

[ 11.291471] [drm] radeon defaulting to kernel modesetting.
[ 11.291477] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[ 11.320384] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (RS780 0x1002:0x9613 0x1179:0xFFB0).

You have KMS enabled so I'm gussing the reason you still see the artifacts on boot up is your distro enables KMS after the kernel is loaded (passing the option to the module for your card) rather than building it directly in kernel.

 

[Izick]

You have KMS enabled so I'm gussing the reason you still see the artifacts on boot up is your distro enables KMS after the kernel is loaded (passing the option to the module for your card) rather than building it directly in kernel.

Can I change this? Is it even worth changing?

 

[angelfly]

Can I change this? Is it even worth changing?

It's easy to change if you know what you're doing since you just have to re-build the kernel with support for it built in but that said it's not worth the time especially if your not familar with it. You shouldn't worry about it since it isn't harmful at all that it's being loaded with the module.

 

[Izick]

It's easy to change if you know what you're doing since you just have to re-build the kernel with support for it built in but that said it's not worth the time especially if your not familar with it. You shouldn't worry about it since it isn't harmful at all that it's being loaded with the module.

Alright, I'll just let it be. Thanks for all the help!

 

[Massa]

I know exactly what you're talking about, I see it on both my ATI systems. It's a small issue with the open source Xorg driver, purely cosmetic.

Anyway, I'm shocked at how well the Android-x86 ISO's run. Has anyone tried them yet? It's technically a Linux distro.

First I tried the AMD build but the keyboard and WiFi didn't work on my HP laptop, and there's no Ethernet support yet. So pretty useless.

Then I tried it on a Sony Vaio/Intel Atom laptop and it worked pretty damn well. I was even able to download and play Game Dev Story from the Market on it.

I can't wait to get an Intel tablet and/or smartphone, hopefully to run Gnome 3 eventually but I'll settle for Android in the meantime. Anything to not be locked in the ARM proprietary world is a plus in my book.

 

[Izick]

I know exactly what you're talking about, I see it on both my ATI systems. It's a small issue with the open source Xorg driver, purely cosmetic.

Anyway, I'm shocked at how well the Android-x86 ISO's run. Has anyone tried them yet? It's technically a Linux distro.

First I tried the AMD build but the keyboard and WiFi didn't work on my HP laptop, and there's no Ethernet support yet. So pretty useless.

Then I tried it on a Sony Vaio/Intel Atom laptop and it worked pretty damn well. I was even able to download and play Game Dev Story from the Market on it.

I can't wait to get an Intel tablet and/or smartphone, hopefully to run Gnome 3 eventually but I'll settle for Android in the meantime. Anything to not be locked in the ARM proprietary world is a plus in my book.

Yeah I'm fine with it as long as it's cosmetic. I was just hoping something didn't go wrong on the install or something.

The phone market isn't my wheelhouse, but I have to say that I like the prospect of having Ubuntu on my computer and phone.

 

[Izick]

Double post.

I'm finally getting used to flash on Ubuntu.

After getting everything up to date, and downloading the Flash-Aid Firefox addon (big props to freddy) I'm starting to get a handle of what I can and can't do.

Youtube seems to be fine as long as I don't go HD (video slows down and loses synch with audio) which is a bummer. Live streams seem to be pretty good, even at 480p+. Other streaming sites are working fairly good as well. Sadly though, blip.tv (where I used to watch many videos) seems to be utter crap now.

 

[itxaka]

Double post.

I'm finally getting used to flash on Ubuntu.

After getting everything up to date, and downloading the Flash-Aid Firefox addon (big props to freddy) I'm starting to get a handle of what I can and can't do.

Youtube seems to be fine as long as I don't go HD (video slows down and loses synch with audio) which is a bummer. Live streams seem to be pretty good, even at 480p+. Other streaming sites are working fairly good as well. Sadly though, blip.tv (where I used to watch many videos) seems to be utter crap now.

Youtube should work without flash. Search for youtube html5.



Ugh I fucking hate HP-UX and Solaris, I miss my linux machines with nano and auto-completition. Vi sucks donkey balls.

 

[Izick]

Youtube should work without flash. Search for youtube html5.



Ugh I fucking hate HP-UX and Solaris, I miss my linux machines with nano and auto-completition. Vi sucks donkey balls.

Only like 50% of videos are HTML 5 though, sadly. (Not an exact number, just a guesstemation on what I've experienced.)

I'm in the trial though, so I'm happy whenever I see one pop up though.

 

[Izick]

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 released.

 

[rpg_poser]

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 released.

Izick is officially a Linux nut. Welcome.

 

[Izick]

Izick is officially a Linux nut. Welcome.

I always obsess over software, I won't lie. Before it was just web browsers and other smaller things because Winows always remains the same, sans a few minor updates and what not, but now I HAVE A WHOLE OS TO LOVE!

 

[Pctx]

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 released.

Was just going to come in here and post that. I'm having to go through and test my servers for migration from 10.04 to 12.04 here this summer. Shouldn't be too big of a deal. Also (as an aside) I think I'm going to go back to Ubuntu as my main OS and simply PGP encrypt my entire linux HDD and call it a day for primary use as I'm in Linux too much now to even be bothered with it. Only thing I need is a VM with Office 2010 for Outlook and I'm good.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Ohh, this is a little perplexing.

My file server has 8GB memory. 6.5 of them are being used, but not by buffers and such:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7973       6655       1317          0         12         59
-/+ buffers/cache:       6583       1389
Swap:        95370          9      95360

Looking at the output from htop, no process is using more than 0.0% memory (that slow percentage is a side effect of that I vastly oversized my swap partition, as you can see above, but it's too late to fix that now). Adding up all the "VIRT" lines in htop brings me to ~1016MB.

I'm just vaguely curious about what might be using so much memory. The system is basically an NIS client and an NFS server. The usual suspects (cron, agetty, syslog-ng, et al), and beyond that my usual administration apps (sshd, screen, htop, nethack) are running. It just feels like it should be using much less than this. Is there any sort of means for me to more effectively hunt down where the memory is being used?

Spoiler

just kidding about nethack

 

[Izick]

What's Ubuntu's default font for Firefox and what not?

I downloaded the MS font pack (I need Times New Roman for college papers) and I think it changed my default font.

 

[GameplayWhore]

What's Ubuntu's default font for Firefox and what not?

I downloaded the MS font pack (I need Times New Roman for college papers) and I think it changed my default font.

I don't know the answer to this question, but doesn't Firefox handle its own fonts, separately from whatever font defaults the OS/DE have?

I mean, you can just go into Edit→Preferences→Content→Fonts&Colors and change it.

Spoiler

After trying for like a year, I ultimately decided that I prefer menus to that drop-down button in Firefox

 

[-KRS-]

What's Ubuntu's default font for Firefox and what not?

I downloaded the MS font pack (I need Times New Roman for college papers) and I think it changed my default font.

I think that's not so much because of the fonts but more because of the setting in firefox that lets websites set their own fonts. I'd guess a lot of sites use the windows fonts, and now that you have them it displays them instead of whatever you had before. You can change this setting in the font settings in firefox, under Content.

Edit: Yeah I don't like that Firefox button. It hides too many things that were in the regular menus.

 

[tfur]

Ohh, this is a little perplexing.

My file server has 8GB memory. 6.5 of them are being used, but not by buffers and such:



Looking at the output from htop, no process is using more than 0.0% memory (that slow percentage is a side effect of that I vastly oversized my swap partition, as you can see above, but it's too late to fix that now). Adding up all the "VIRT" lines in htop brings me to ~1016MB.

I'm just vaguely curious about what might be using so much memory. The system is basically an NIS client and an NFS server. The usual suspects (cron, agetty, syslog-ng, et al), and beyond that my usual administration apps (sshd, screen, htop, nethack) are running. It just feels like it should be using much less than this. Is there any sort of means for me to more effectively hunt down where the memory is being used?

Spoiler

just kidding about nethack

Find large percentage usage with: ps auwx
or use top and show percentages

Lots of details in /proc/pid
more details: pmap -x pid

 

[GameplayWhore]

Find large percentage usage with: ps auwx
or use top and show percentages

Lots of details in /proc/pid
more details: pmap -x pid

ps auwx seems to pretty much give the same results as htop, which is just a more fleshed out version of top. As before, the sum of reported memory usage of all the processes listed using this commend (VSZ+RSZ) is a tiny, tiny fraction (12-15%) of the total amount of non-buffer/cache memory usage. None of the entries are excessively high. One reports ~133MB, two are around 60MB, and everything else is below 40MB.

Is there anywhere else I can look to see where memory is being allocated?

 

[tfur]

ps auwx seems to pretty much give the same results as htop, which is just a more fleshed out version of top. As before, the sum of reported memory usage of all the processes listed using this commend (VSZ+RSZ) is a tiny, tiny fraction (12-15%) of the total amount of non-buffer/cache memory usage. None of the entries are excessively high. One reports ~133MB, two are around 60MB, and everything else is below 40MB.

Is there anywhere else I can look to see where memory is being allocated?

cat /proc/*/status

Again, pmap -x pid, will give you everything you need.

Example:

for i in `ps -ef | grep -v PID | awk '{print $2}'`; do echo $i; pmap -x $i | grep total ; done

 

[GameplayWhore]

cat /proc/*/status

Again, pmap -x pid, will give you everything you need.

Example:

for i in `ps -ef | grep -v PID | awk '{print $2}'`; do echo $i; pmap -x $i | grep total ; done

I will look more deeply into these commands and virtual files. But the total sum of memory usage in the above line is about one-fifth of the total non-buffers/cache usage that free reports.

edit: The sum of the VmPeaks of all processes is about a third of the total, but that includes shared libraries multiple times, doesn't it?

 

[tfur]

I will look more deeply into these commands and virtual files. But the total sum of memory usage in the above line is about one-fifth of the total non-buffers/cache usage that free reports.

edit: The sum of the VmPeaks of all processes is about a third of the total, but that includes shared libraries multiple times, doesn't it?

pmap -x will give you everything for pids, but you can still have out standing memory related to the vm.

Look here:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt

Specifically look at the drop_caches area, as well as dirty_. Also, there was a change made recently for large memory performance. You see it as a process khugepaged. You can test flipping the on and off.

Try the following and look at the changes in memory:

free
sync
free
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sync
free
echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sync
free

The only time things get weird, is when you have files open and then unlink/rm them while they are still in use. Even though they appear to be gone, the are opened, accessible and being used by the system.

 

[GameplayWhore]

pmap -x will give you everything for pids, but you can still have out standing memory related to the vm.

Look here:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt

Specifically look at the drop_caches area, as well as dirty_. Also, there was a change made recently for large memory performance. You see it as a process khugepaged. You can test flipping the on and off.

Try the following and look at the changes in memory:

free
sync
free
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sync
free
echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sync
free

The only time things get weird, is when you have files open and then unlink/rm them while they are still in use. Even though they appear to be gone, the are opened, accessible and being used by the system.

Ooooh, I am now reminded of drop_caches. We had a particularly ... assertive genetics researcher here would would use perl scripts to process imaginably huge strands of genetic data. This would regularly down the machine, as it used more memory than the machine had, probably including swap. He was very adament and insistent that the problem was that the system wasn't freeing memory quickly enough to account for the rapid increase in memory usage, so I tried doing some of the above to sate him.

He was never sated. And many of us are a little happier that he's since moved on.


Anyway, thank you for all the suggestions.


edit: aha, looks like it was caching inodes, which seems pretty natural for a biggish file server, especially after hefty rsyncing. I was just assuming that this would have been counted as cache in free and wouldn't be counted in the "+/- buffers/cache" line for used memory.