Free memory indicator (bottom RH corner) - FULL INSTALL ONLY

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bambuko
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Free memory indicator (bottom RH corner) - FULL INSTALL ONLY

#1 Post by bambuko »

can somebody please help me to understand what is indicated by "free memory" thingy in the bottom rh taskbar?
I have FULL INSTALL with 4GB RAM and no swap partition.

Code: Select all

# free
              total         used         free       shared      buffers
  Mem:      3370384       352648      3017736            0        17976
 Swap:            0            0            0
Total:      3370384       352648      3017736 
and

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# df -m
Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3                 9844       480      8864   5% /
/dev/sda6                24987     14620     10368  59% /mnt/sda6
/dev/sda7                24987      9909     15078  40% /mnt/sda7
/dev/sda8                24987      6509     18479  26% /mnt/sda8
/dev/sda9                31981     25002      6979  78% /mnt/sda9
Where sda3 is Puppy partition (6, 7, 8 and 9 are data partitions)
The "free memory" thingy normally tells me that 8864 is free
(btw I understand that it is not RAM that it indicates, but what does it indicated for FULL INSTALL?)

what surprised me tonight (while surfing on Seamonkey, with nothing else going on)
that suddenly the usage went 100%, red box with warnings about lack of available memory appeared on my screen . . .
I must admit - I have panicked a bit and simply rebooted.
Everything is fine now, but I don't like things I do not understand, so I hope that somebody can enlighten me :idea: please
Last edited by bambuko on Sun 11 Jan 2009, 22:01, edited 1 time in total.

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rjbrewer
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#2 Post by rjbrewer »

Bambuko

The little blue box tells you how much space is left on that partition.

Run gparted to check it to.

rjb

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bambuko
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#3 Post by bambuko »

rjbrewer wrote:. . .how much space is left on that partition. . .
sda3 - OK understand now, but it doesn't make sense with sudden 100% usage ?
how is it possible that, just surfing Seamonkey I went from 5% usage to 100% - weird
Is this something to do with the lack of swap partition?
I thought I didn't need it with 4GB ram?
rjbrewer wrote:. . .Run gparted to check it to. . .
don't need to :wink: it's the same as df -m (see in my posting above)

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rjbrewer
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#4 Post by rjbrewer »

Well; if your on sda3 it would say 8.8g.
Very strange.
Was it the grey cpu usage box turning all red?

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Mr. Maxwell
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#5 Post by Mr. Maxwell »

Go buy a memory riser and install 128GB of 1600MHz RAM. :D

Could it have something to do with puppy not supporting 4GB of RAM? (Asumming puppy is 32 bit not 64bit) It only shows 3.3GBs of total RAM. 32 bit OS's can only suport 4GB of RAM and 1 GB of that RAM is reserved for something that I can't remember.

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rjbrewer
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#6 Post by rjbrewer »

Something I really don't understand: I only have 256mb ram and
it shows 0 shared.

You are showing almost 90percent shared. Shared with what?

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rjbrewer
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#7 Post by rjbrewer »

Never mind; shift words left.

Try with 2 gigs ram.

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rjbrewer
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#8 Post by rjbrewer »

Bambuko

A little searching indicates that puppy could use as much as 64 gigs of ram.

The only time I ever saw the flashing red indication and warnings
was when a frugal pup-save file ran out of space.

Maybe watching "top" will give an indication of what's going on.

good luck

rjb

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bambuko
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#9 Post by bambuko »

rjbrewer wrote:. . .if your on sda3 it would say 8.8g . . .
it shows 8864 (1M-blocks) so this is fine
rjbrewer wrote:. . .Was it the grey cpu usage box turning all red?
yes, it was the grey box filling in red, additional red warning showing at the top of the screen, and free memory indicator going down to 0. . .[/quote]
rjbrewer wrote:. . .Very strange. . .
yeap, most puzzling :roll:

rjbrewer wrote:. . .Maybe watching "top" will give an indication of what's going on. . .
yes, will have to try it before re-booting next time :wink:

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bambuko
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#10 Post by bambuko »

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9%   0% X :0 -br -nolisten tcp 
4%   0% /usr/lib/seamonkey-1.1.8/seamonkey-bin 
1%   0% /usr/local/apps/ROX-Filer/ROX-Filer -p /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin 
I am just browsing and running rxvt with top, so what is this tcp?
quick google search didn't come up with anything that would help me :?
but I assume it is normal?

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rjbrewer
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#11 Post by rjbrewer »

Bambuko

Don't know what "nolisten tcp" is about. I just ignore it.

I meant, keep the "top" screen up and running while using
seamonkey and watching videostreams or whatever it was
you were doing when the problem happened originally; see
what the percentage of ram and cpu says.

rjb

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bambuko
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#12 Post by bambuko »

yes, that's what I am doing now (running top)
and the percentage in my post above are what it is showing when working fine

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rjbrewer
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#13 Post by rjbrewer »

Well; I'm totally bamboozled for now.

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ttuuxxx
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#14 Post by ttuuxxx »

just increase your pupsave file to 13gigs like I did and don't think about it :) lol
I actually had it down to 8 gigs within 4 days, compiling browsers etc, Firefox takes 500MB of compiling space alone.
ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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trapster
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#15 Post by trapster »

just increase your pupsave file to 13gigs
No pup_save file with a FULL install...
trapster
Maine, USA

Asus eeepc 1005HA PU1X-BK
Frugal install: Slacko
Currently using full install: DebianDog

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ttuuxxx
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#16 Post by ttuuxxx »

:idea: goes off,lol Sorry I was confusing it with my frugal install :) I think frugal is the best for packager and developers, with my 13 gig pupsave, I copy it as pup_save.zzz and when I get a major muckup. I just restart and do the puppy fix=ram, then copy my files from the messed-up pupsave to a folder, then delete the pupsave and copy the backup and restart the pc and I'm back in business in about 5 or less minutes with the compiler,icewm and a handful of programs, very handy. I think I might give up on compiling live, its quick this way, because compiling live takes about 15mins just to check the dep when installing my devx_410.pet, then reinstall all my programs I use, maybe 1hr.
ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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rjbrewer
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#17 Post by rjbrewer »

Vague memory;

I had Redhat 9 installed when I first got my old pc.
It had the option of automounting drives. I tried that, but
once it automounted the cd drive and started mounting all
the rpm packages; (or something like that). Very messy.

Does mepis have something like that?

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bambuko
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#18 Post by bambuko »

well, I have tried :oops:
the title of the thread is:
free memory indicator (bottom RH corner) FULL INSTALL
and I started the description of the problem by saying:
I have FULL INSTALL
fully in the knowledge that there was bound to be somebody who will advise me to do something with my pupsave file :lol:

I think, I will make suggestion to the mods, that we should have the section of the forum dedicated to FULL INSTALL,
where any mention of frugal, or multisession dvd, will be met with full and instant banishment from the section :P

Joking aside, thanks for trying ttuuxxx (we all suffer from senior moments occasionally),
maybe now, that you know what I am talking about, you will have some idea about my problem :?: :wink:

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bambuko
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#19 Post by bambuko »

ttuuxxx wrote:. . .when I get a major muckup. I just restart and do the puppy fix=ram, then copy my files from the messed-up pupsave to a folder, then delete the pupsave and copy the backup and restart the pc and I'm back in business in about 5 or less minutes with the compiler,icewm and a handful of programs. . . then reinstall all my programs I use, maybe 1hr
seems to me like a very complicated way of doing things :?:
when I muck up I just restore partition image and I am done in a couple of minutes, back exactly where I was before I started . . . :P

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canbyte
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#20 Post by canbyte »

Also having problems which result in cpu usage going way up as shown by the red area increasing. Trying to run audio cd Gets very slow, like the audio player is bloating itself in memory. No sound. Using 385meg ram. Should be enough. 17g free on HD puppy 4.1.2, on hd.


fwiw, Link to that thread:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37549

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