Server system specs

Ok, now first off, I'm not some super user here, just have a small handful of us playing on my little server. I'll probably never have more than 20 people logged into it at any given point in time.

My current box is a little Acer Aspire L100. It's not much, but I didn't figure I would need a whole lot for just a few of us. It's got 2GB of ram, a 280GB hard drive, and a Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual-Core processor. The only problem I've ever had was the fact that it's cooling system sucks.

But then I notice that loading 3 maps pretty much kills the memory and loading a 4th just crashes the server.

Sooo, I go digging around through my spare parts, and what do you know, I've got a brand new EliteGroup Geforce6100PM-M2 sitting here with a nearly smoking CPU. (At least it was when I got it.) Unfortunately, I need a power supply and more RAM. It's got two slots, but I've only got a couple of 1GB sticks sitting around. I can probably afford 4GB (2x2GB) and maybe even 8GB if I really push my finances. (16GB just isn't going to happen even though the MB supports it because I don't have $1000 to blow on RAM.)

So now my question...
In your experiences, how many maps can you load on X amount of memory?
As is it, I spend half my time tabbing out to change what maps are loaded. It would be nice if this was only an occasional effort, or if it was something I didn't have to do.

(I'm using 343's latest release BTW.)

from what i know to start all caves in 343's release u need 16GB ram but not sure about how much a map uses cause i guess it depends on how much is the cave

Correct, I recommend NO less than 16GB to run all instances of my release simultaneously, "correctly" anyways...

However, there is a method (that I would HIGHLY recommend AGAINST) in which you MAY be able to run all instances (using a single 'instance' of GS) utilizing much less ram (you may be able to get away with 8GB or even 4GB =X

If you desire to try this method start the maps in this manner from the command line (You can start the whole server from pwAdmin, then just stop the world map, leaving everything else running -- Then use the following command to start all maps):

Code:

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./gs gs01 gs.conf gmserver.conf gsalias.conf is01 is02 is05 is06 is07 is08 is09 is10 is11 is12 is13 is14 is15 is16 is17 is18 is19 is20 is21 is22 is23 is24 is25 is26 is27 is28 is29 is31 is32 is33 is34 is35 b05 house1 house2 house3 house4 house5 house6 z9 q20 arena04 arena01 arena02 arena03 jail bg01 bg02 bg03 bg04 bg05 bg06 > /PWServer/logs/gs_all.log &

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Now if I am not mistaken, the real big downside to this method is, if one map 'crashes' they all come down! As where starting them all separately, if one goes down it doesn't effect the others, but ofc that is what uses so much ram. So you can weigh the pros and cons for yourself :wink:

Add: I cannot entirely 'support' the above method; at least not in terms of stability or reliability. I also don't thik 16GB would be no $1000; but ofc that depends on what kind of slots you have. DDR3 is real cheap right now, and even DDR2 is not bad. I have purchased entire server machines with 16GB of ram already for like $100 I'll have to dig up that link now, GREAT machines AND they don't break the bank :wink:

Add: here ya go dude, eBay FTW:
http://forum.ragezone.com/f452/found...ml#post6467445
keep your eyes peeled for something like that (look at the last link to the Sun V20Z) and you'll be golden! I know those are long gone (hell I personally bought 3 or 4 of those) but keep lookin and I bet you can find something just as good if not better...

Add: here, I even did some homework for you -- Since I am a 'fan' of that model the current 'cheapest' one on eBay is this one: Sun SunFire V20z 1U Server AMD Opteron 250 2.4GHz CPU 16GB RAM Rack Mount Unit | eBay if you can afford the approximately $260 (I don't think shipping for you will be much different, you're not that far away from me)... You'd have a complete machine with 16GB of ram & a 30 day DOA warr. :wink:

Well u can also load all maps on a 4gig ram make use of swap file memory i can load all the maps under 2 gig ram but with a 4 gig swap
Posted via Mobile Device

Quote:

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Originally Posted by norman1234

Well u can also load all maps on a 4gig ram make use of swap file memory i can load all the maps under 2 gig ram but with a 4 gig swap
Posted via Mobile Device

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akjdsnkajsndkjasndjasnkda

Stop telling people that, you aren't supposed to use swap to do that as that isn't what it was designed for >_>

With only 20 people max on your server you wont need all maps so perhaps use 343's method to load all of the maps you think you will need for the day. In addition to that I would load another map separate from the rest for making xml edits so if you do a wrong edit you will only crash that map and not all the others.

*cough*thenextpersonwhomentionsusingswapinsteadofREALramgetspermabannedfromRZ*cough*

thanks for the link to the Sun server. I just might go that route when I have the money available. It's the same price as the 8GB ram that I was considering.

I was having real trouble finding DDR2 800Mhz ram sticks in 16GB (2x8GB) configuration for this. If I had 4 slots, it would be super easy, but apparently 8GB sticks are more difficult for the DDR2 dual-channel flavor I have.

For now I may try that string, but limit the number of maps to only those that I'll be using regularly. I would assume that I could manually load/unload the other maps that I required through PWadmin. First I've got to figure out how to tinker with those .jsp files though. I'm familiar with java, but not a pro by any means, and my attempt at adding items to the "Get Items" page failed horribly. Mails just arrived empty.

BTW, I didn't know Linux had a swap file like that >.< I won't try that route anyway, I'll be pushing stability as it is with only loading 4 or 5 of my most commonly used maps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Allisandre

thanks for the link to the Sun server. I just might go that route when I have the money available. It's the same price as the 8GB ram that I was considering.

I was having real trouble finding DDR2 800Mhz ram sticks in 16GB (2x8GB) configuration for this. If I had 4 slots, it would be super easy, but apparently 8GB sticks are more difficult for the DDR2 dual-channel flavor I have.

For now I may try that string, but limit the number of maps to only those that I'll be using regularly. I would assume that I could manually load/unload the other maps that I required through PWadmin. First I've got to figure out how to tinker with those .jsp files though. I'm familiar with java, but not a pro by any means, and my attempt at adding items to the "Get Items" page failed horribly. Mails just arrived empty.

BTW, I didn't know Linux had a swap file like that >.< I won't try that route anyway, I'll be pushing stability as it is with only loading 4 or 5 of my most commonly used maps.

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No problem, I provide pretty good prices on shit usually. A lot of my friends come to me as their 'sales consultant'. Only downside is some people are absolutely against used or refurbished... Personally IDK why, I am all for used or refurb since you can get such good deals that way... and eBay FTW for sure since you get 'buyer protection' even if they don't mention a 'warranty' (only had to really do this once anyway myself, I've noticed as long as you pay attn to ppls feedback you usually wont have any problems :):)

If I am not mistaken, using that method to open more than one map will consume the same amount of ram (or really close to it) no matter how many maps you open in that matter, whether it be one map, or 10, or all... So if you do want to 'play around' with that method you may as well open them all... But then manually opening more later on from pwAdmin is going to 'open' another 'instance' of GS, so that will consume more ram as the more you open...

If an item in "get item" or "send mail" fails it is (my guess) that it's going to be one of two things. Number 1) you failed to enter the correct HEX value for the item (if there is one, if not it must be blank "") Number 2) you edited the wrong one ~ with my release there are two separate tomcats -- one for 'you' (the admin) and one for the 'user'/player... If you modify this one:
/opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.28/2/webapps/pwAdmin/addons/ send mail -or- get item this would be the one that only you (the admin) can log into using port 8443 (using pwAdmin)

If you modify the one in:
/opt/apache-tomcat-5.5.28/webapps/Account/Services/ send mail -or- get item this is the one you will get from the 'normal website' (for the 'users'/players to use)

&& yea, I am sooooo not going to rant about swap again; just that yes, swap has it's proper uses -- unfortunately many people seem to think swap means alternative to RAM =\ If you really want to know my stance on this, search the boards for it as I know I have quite bluntly ranted about this in the past as well :lol:

add:

Ok, so my rant on swap here:

http://forum.ragezone.com/f452/found...ml#post6539767

Most important part being the ratio:

Spoiler:

TABLE:

Code:

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PHYSICAL SYSTEM RAM      SWAP CALCULATOR
0 GB ~ 16GB              P*1.00=s
17 GB ~ 255 GB            P*0.50=s
256 GB +                  P*0.25=s

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Where:
P = PHYSICAL RAM
* = MULTIPLY
s = MAX swap amount
= = EQUALS

oh, I always figure whatever the default for swap is, that's what it should be at. I've tried playing with it before in Windows, and the results ranged from barely-noticeable improvement to slowing the system down.

In this case, I'll let linux do what it does best. Now worries about me playing with swap.

As for the mail codes, I've now lost all the changes I made, but here's a quick example...

{"0", "Select Item", "XML", "Mask", "Proctype", "Stacked", "Max Count", "Expire Date"}
{"23343", "Friendship Crystal", "", "0", "55", "1", "9999", "0"}

So since that seemed to work, I just copied the line, changed the Item ID number and name, then edited the "stacked" and "Max Count" lines.

I only had the friendship crystal to reference, and looking in "items.jsp", I can see now how wrong that was and why it didn't work. Now I'm trying to figure out what I was looking at that only have the one item listed that I copied.

Thank you again, and I really do hope that you do decide to keep working on releases again. I love the work you've done so far.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by das7002

akjdsnkajsndkjasndjasnkda

Stop telling people that, you aren't supposed to use swap to do that as that isn't what it was designed for >_>

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Swap on fast disk (ssd, raid ssd) is perfectly fine and fast enough to do this. If it's cheaper for someone to go this way, why occulting it?

Obviously we're not talking about that laptop's hdd with windows + virtualbox running on it on top of pw server.

First of all, SSD's are NOT as cheap or cheaper than RAM, so you just kinda lost your argument there alone... Even if they WERE cheaper than RAM, (granted they are faster than traditional platter HDDs) they will still NOT be as FAST as RAM, therefore you still lose your argument because nothing, especially not SWAP, (of any kind on any kind of drive) can compare to real true legit RAM...

I may be completely wrong here but would the smaller non-debugging version of the GS use less ram?

Not being a C programmer i have no idea how the compiler works, but the text labels in the GS alone account for a fair % of the overall size.

Notice the "if" it's cheaper :)

Most likely buying a 1U server from scrap would be cheaper with 16gb ram and normal HDD than with SSD we'll agree on that. But not everyone starts by investing this kind of money. Some people already have a server or use a home computer.
Swap is used to unload some unused stuff to free ram, in a small server where not all instances are active (have players in) all the time, it works just fine even with raid HDD.

Now if you aim to be a top class server with 1000+ players online, well yes you better invest in a proper ram-stuffed unit. You should actually have 2 and separate your website from game server. Or even 3 and have the databases on the third one.

I was just pointing that to start with a few friends or do a test server, a old laptop with a large swap will do. I actually run a test server on a 1ghz, 600mb ram (2gb swap), 10gb HDD setup, it can load main world + 3-4 maps without problem.

So in my opinion, Allisandre could increase swap to like 10gb. It's free and easy to do. Does it work for the less than 20 people you want online? great you saved money and troubles. Does it lag/crash (that's the worse that can happen)? It's always time to buy more RAM.

I agree with some parts of your last post, however you're still VERY WRONG about swap!

NEVER increase swap to 10GB if you only have say 2GB, even 8GB of ram... YOU NEVER want to go with ANYTHING higher than a 1:1 ratio Physical Ram:Swap...

Sure, some people just want to 'dick around' with it (a server) ~ or run a 'little' server for them and their friends/family to 'dick around on'; yes sometimes it may be a laptop. There's no problem with using whatever you have or want to, as long as it meets the MINIMUM specs to run the server with at least ONE map (the world map); and as I pointed out there IS a way to start all maps on basically 'one instance' of GS. So; that being said that is much more logical than your illogical and INCORRECT method of incorrectly using swap...

Add:

http://forum.ragezone.com/6539767-post55.html

1) I didn't know/didn't pay attention to that way to load all map at once. It is indeed a better solution than increased swap.

2) I'm not wrong and neither are you. On production server swap shouldn't even be used or swapiness should be really low (most stuff will be "pressing"). But on a small "goofing around" server there is usually 10GB of "idling" stuff for 1GB of "pressing", swap makes sense and won't create problems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Souris

1) I didn't know/didn't pay attention to that way to load all map at once. It is indeed a better solution than increased swap.

2) I'm not wrong and neither are you. On production server swap shouldn't even be used or swapiness should be really low (most stuff will be "pressing"). But on a small "goofing around" server there is usually 10GB of "idling" stuff for 1GB of "pressing", swap makes sense and won't create problems.

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See... when you do this you end up forcing the OS to put programs that are running into swap if they aren't doing all that much. Which means in order for them to do anything they have to be taken out of swap, and if their is no other RAM available it has to make decisions about what it needs to shuffle around. When it finally gets it into RAM then the CPU can execute things (CPU can only execute and read from RAM)

Swap was designed to put things that are truly not being used (as in they are running but not using CPU and haven't gotten a user request in a while) at all there to give the appearance of more free RAM. (when it is needed, as in program X hasn't done anything in a while but is hoarding a lot of memory. program Y has been requested to start and needs that memory) Trying to use swap as actual RAM is just utter stupidity. (and if you somehow have 10GB of sleeping processes you are doing something wrong)

LOL I'm just going to leave the swap alone. I'm sure Linux figured out what to make it when I installed it, and from what I've read, the default is a 1:1 ratio.

I'm curious about that string though, I'd like to tinker with it, but is there any way to not have to type it all out every time?

I thought I'd try doing a "nano mapload.sh", typing it all out there and putting it in the same directory as start.sh and stop.sh. If I haven't mentioned it, I'm a bit of a noob with the command line, but it makes sense to me that this would work.

I think it would be cool if I could put the pause in, like you've got in the installer 343, that would warn me to turn off all the maps before continuing.

I'll have to take a look at those files and see if I can find anything useful.

Please let me know if this won't work. I'd hate to fry my system again.

Sure, just use this after running start.sh

Then you wont have to start anything from pwAdmin. start.sh (original) will start MySQL Apache and both TOMCATs, like normal, then startPW.sh will start full PW server including all maps...

well that was fun =P I'll just need a new system to load all the maps. It started throwing errors that things had been waiting for more than 120 seconds. after a minute or two the system just locked up. (Does that when it gets hot and the shell doesn't notice in time to shut down.)

If I remove some of the maps I'm not using, (like houses ect.) will I be able to manually load them later if I want?

You can try starting less maps, it may help... I would say NOT to start them after running that command. I would say stop them all and restart all the ones you want open using that method / command of opening more than one map on one GS... Because; if you open say 5 maps using that method, then you decide well now you want 2 more well now you're using at least 2 'instances' of GS, which is really gonna suck up ram!

Hmm. That specs thingy is pretty useless because it depends on some more config than just RAM and CPU i guess. Why i say that is because we had the server running on a v-server hosted by strato ( 8 GB Ram ) and all was fine. Now we switched to gigahosting and now we need 12 GB ram with exactly the same config like before ( there are less players than before, all other things are the same ).

I see nobody really knows whether my suggestion would work lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rbb138

I may be completely wrong here but would the smaller non-debugging version of the GS use less ram?

Not being a C programmer i have no idea how the compiler works, but the text labels in the GS alone account for a fair % of the overall size.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by rbb138

I see nobody really knows whether my suggestion would work lol.

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Honestly, yea; I have no clue if that would work. I don't even have a copy of said 'smaller non-debugging version of GS'

Tell me where to get it, or share it and I'll test...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 343

Honestly, yea; I have no clue if that would work. I don't even have a copy of said 'smaller non-debugging version of GS'

Tell me where to get it, or share it and I'll test...

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Code:

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cp gs gs.old
strip gs

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tada

Quote:

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Originally Posted by das7002

Code:

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cp gs gs.old
strip gs

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tada

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needed to install binutils, but size of gs before strip was 135,643,138 and the size after was 7,153,892. giving it a shot now, will post my findings.

I did tell you its a huge %
But I've done a memory dump of the gs before and it mostly contained character data of online people which were loaded into the map from the database.

I still can't load all the maps with that file from 343. It gets to 32 and my CPU locks up freezing the entire system. (I'm also getting a lot of "err : info : gdelivery::connect to GAuth server failed. Reconnecting..." messages.)

Running with the normal ./start.sh command, I am able to now load 6 maps compared to my previous 3. That's a huge improvement. Now I can leave the Cube and OHT up all the time.

(N.B. I'm not trying to start an argument, but rather trying to make sure that there's clarity. :cool: Linux MM/VM is confusing, even if you think you know how the code works; it's been redesigned enough times over the years that it's almost like looking at unfamiliar code each time if you only look at it annually or less...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 343

NEVER increase swap to 10GB if you only have say 2GB, even 8GB of ram... YOU NEVER want to go with ANYTHING higher than a 1:1 ratio Physical Ram:Swap...

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Due to the way that virtual memory works in Linux, this is (mostly) untrue, especially with certain tasks such as large Java programs (e.g. enterprisey J2EE stuff) or certain types of databases (which is getting WAY off-topic for RZ, but *coughcough* Oracle).

However, for the subject of this discussion (PW private servers), I concur that 1:1-1.5:1 is the target to aim for due to the evil OOM. :P: That being said, if a system is (ab)using a lot of shmfs/tmpfs space, I could see an argument for going as high as 2:1. However, I'd probably want to find out why there was heavy utilization there and move the offender to a separate machine.

I don't want to get into the way that the Linux kernel manages things like LRUs with VM, but basically, Linux handles free memory differently based upon how much total (phys+swap) memory is available. For example, there's a magic number around 10GB where it will suddenly try to allocate memory differently. Many people with 4GB RAM will find that around 6GB swap will "work better" than 4GB for tasks which use memory in bursts, due to this fact.


Of course, everyone should be using a 64-bit kernel/OS for things like private servers. If there haven't been enough arguments in favor of it already, open your Linux kernel source tree, go to Documentation/vm, and scroll to the bottom of highmem.txt (you can safely ignore the technical details above the last paragraph):

Spoiler:

The general recommendation is that you don't use more than 8GiB on a 32-bit
machine - although more might work for you and your workload, you're pretty
much on your own - don't expect kernel developers to really care much if things
come apart.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 343

Add:

http://forum.ragezone.com/6539767-post55.html

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In this link, you mention dropping your swap to less than your physical RAM. Basically, you never want to drop below the amount of installed physical memory that is exposed to the operating system. If you're using a server with hot-spare or memory cloning/mirroring, it's a good rule of thumb to consider the amount of installed memory as eventually being accessible to the OS, however.

As I know that many of the people here are fans of Ubuntu, I'll quote their FAQ:

Ubuntu Swap FAQ

Spoiler:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by How much swap do I need?

As a base minimum, it's highly recommended that the swap space should be equal to the amount of physical memory (RAM). Also, it's recommended that the swap space is twice the amount of physical memory (RAM) depending upon the amount of hard disk space available for the system (although this "recommendation" dates back from a time when physical RAM was very expensive and most Unix systems ran with many processes in swap space - a situation that hardly applies in most situations these days, but ancient Unix/Linux myths like this "recommendation" tend to survive well past their "use by" dates). In reality, if you use hibernation you need what was outlined in the relevant paragraph above, otherwise you need as much swap space as your system will use - which actually may be very little in a modern hardware setup. The only downside to having more swap space than you will actually use is the disk space you will be reserving for it.

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All this being said, while I'm on the subject of Linux VM, has anyone tried to see if KSM helps the memory footprint? I've been kind of afraid to try, but I have a testing box here I can turn on memory cloning on to drop its available RAM in half if no one else is game... :thumbup1:

Also on this subject, perhaps some enterprising soul might want to investigate other tunables to make running out of RAM suck a bit less. Playing with things like the OOM and overcommit policies seem like good starts, and I've not seen much (any) discussion of these on RZ.

(Disclaimer: I've been doing this kind of stuff with Linux since 1995 [and "bigger machines" before that], about the time when kernel 2.0 came out. So if I managed to slip in a historical artifact that hasn't been true for some years, I apologize.)

IDK where you got your mis-information from -- Why the hell wouldn't you want your swap to be lower than physical... If you're running a really high end server with 2 TB of ram there is NO WAY you would want to have 2 TB of swap too -- that's just asinine!

hibernation

So you can physically cut power to the machine and go back right to where you were. That is kinda why 2:1 is advocated, but beyond that is insane.

I'll stick with the info I have obtained of

NO MORE than 1:1

I will also

Quote:

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(although this "recommendation" dates back from a time when physical RAM was very expensive

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That's the point, people and 'industry' relied more on swap because of the ultimate high cost of ram. Now ram is so cheap there is NO reason to go above 1:1 (to me).

Additionally like I said, yes, in very large amounts you do not even want 1:1 (that's just ridiculous)

add:
put it this way
if I had a machine that had 2 TB of PHYSICAL ram, I would NEVER run 2 TB of swap. The correct amount of swap for having 2 TB of physical ram would be 500 GB of swap

not that I could even imagine utilizing 2TB of ram period, let alone the 500 GB swap beyond that O.O

Even the idea of a (very brief) moment of downtime doesn't mean anything to me, I couldn't see justifying 2:1 just so *maybe* you could keep a machine/server running seamlessly, and I think the world has become too obsessed with that. So what if a machine needs to come down 10 minutes for a ram swap -- really, who cares!

I guess my overall point is:

If you buy enough ram (especially being cheap enough now-a-days) you technically wouldn't even need swap really! Like that 2 TB 'dream' I would never use it all, so in theory if I did have a machine with 2 TB of physical ram I actually wouldn't even need swap at all :ott1:

Regardless, the points made in that kernel development thread are just the tips of the icebergs now. In the intervening half decade or so, we now have even more parts of the kernel relying upon adequate swap space. As I posted, two of the most overlooked (and yet most hated) are the overcommitter and OOM killer.

Especially in the context of running a PW private server, those need to be kept in mind, as I'm willing to bet most people here don't even realize that Linux is being lazy about providing the processes the memory they're asking for and won't initialize their swap space till it "needs to".

If you have insufficient swap, it'll try to swap a bunch of stuff out at once and fail, as soon as there's a large memory request that it's overcommitted. Then, it'll kill something to free up some RAM. It happens so fast that it just looks like "it died".

Pretty much, please don't assume how Linux manages memory if you've not hacked on that part of the kernel. (Whether for some masochistic definition of "fun" or for probably not-enough pay.)

That is technically a good thing tbh... forcing everything to stay in RAM as long as possible because of the slow as all hell disks.

And 343, you've obviously never seen HP Nonstop machines or even some made by IBM that are literally designed to never shut down, there is at least 2 of every single component in the system so that you can upgrade and change things while it is running. Heck you could give the OS a whole new motherboard CPU and RAM upgrade without shutting it off or telling it you are about to do so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by das7002

That is technically a good thing tbh... forcing everything to stay in RAM as long as possible because of the slow as all hell disks.

And 343, you've obviously never seen HP Nonstop machines or even some made by IBM that are literally designed to never shut down, there is at least 2 of every single component in the system so that you can upgrade and change things while it is running. Heck you could give the OS a whole new motherboard CPU and RAM upgrade without shutting it off or telling it you are about to do so.

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No, I have seen them. My personal comment and belief is that it's stupid... I think people can deal with 'a little' "downtime"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by das7002

That is technically a good thing tbh... forcing everything to stay in RAM as long as possible because of the slow as all hell disks.

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Er, not quite how overcommitting works... It's more like this:

App: Hey, I need a couple gigs of RAM.
Kernel: Huh? OK, here's the address.
* Kernel allocates a bit of that gig and the app uses 64MB it, since the kernel knows most things don't use most of their requests.
* App suddenly needs the rest of the gig and tries to use it.
Kernel: Hold on a sec, I'm swapping.

Ideally, a fraction of a second later, the app can use the rest of the overcommitted memory space. However, if there isn't enough swap, the kernel takes steps to free up RAM. Usually by killing things, sometimes even the process requesting to use all the memory that the kernel told it that it could have! :O:

Basically, overcommitted memory is memory that is promised to apps but isn't actually being used by anything. And as the comment I quoted states, its default is to be somewhat wary of wild requests, but still promise more than it can fulfill. The entire point is to use less of the swap, speeding up your system.

It comes down to this: Swap is slow, but it can be a necessary evil. Keep enough around that the kernel can live up to the promises it makes to your workload.

This has been a huge oversimplification. However, it's fairly accurate.

Ok, I am still not understanding what you're saying myself here.

So you're telling me, that even if I had a machine that had more ram than it even needed to use, it would STILL require a swap equal to or greater than.

This makes no logical sense to me. What I'm hearing is:

"yes, even though your machine has 16GB of physical ram, and even though your OS and 'applications' combined will only take up (lets say) 10GB (leaving 6GB 'too much') -- I STILL need at least (not like I'd say "at MOST") 16GB of swap"

To me that defies logic. If I have a machine that is configured to need 10GB of ram between OS and 'applications' and I 'run' it on a machine that has 32GB of physical ram, imho why would swap be technically *necessary* at all ???

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 343

Ok, I am still not understanding what you're saying myself here.

So you're telling me, that even if I had a machine that had more ram than it even needed to use, it would STILL require a swap equal to or greater than.

This makes no logical sense to me. What I'm hearing is:

"yes, even though your machine has 16GB of physical ram, and even though your OS and 'applications' combined will only take up (lets say) 10GB (leaving 6GB 'too much') -- I STILL need at least (not like I'd say "at MOST") 16GB of swap"

To me that defies logic. If I have a machine that is configured to need 10GB of ram between OS and 'applications' and I 'run' it on a machine that has 32GB of physical ram, imho why would swap be technically *necessary* at all ???

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That's why I linked that long thread from the kernel hackers when they discussed precisely that a few years back. :laugh:

Basically, what it comes down to is that even if you aren't "using" all the RAM in your system, the OS is using it for its own nefarious purposes (like caching hard disk reads). Many apps are aware of how Linux handles memory (e.g. promising more than it can actually give to apps, while using memory to speed up the system) and purposely request large blocks of memory so they have a better chance of getting it when/if they need it.

This is fully transparent to the user if there's enough swap, as the memory that has been overcommitted doesn't actually "live" in either physical memory or as swap: it's like the kernel gives an IOU that looks just like real money. So when some app goes to use memory it's been promised, it doesn't know whether it has an IOU or the real thing. The kernel handles all that transparently, provided it can shuffle things into swap that haven't been used in a while or can kill something to free up some memory (to further the money analogy: when a process collects on its IOU it thinks is real money, the kernel hurries up to try to rob Peter to pay Paul, except it has a license to kill).

So, basically, if you're a desktop user whose computer is just a way to play Frozen Bubble and to back up your pictures from your phone, you can probably get away easily with little swap.

Throw in light usage things like Firefox and Open, er, LibreOffice and you'll occasionally hit OOM situations where the kernel will kill things you aren't needing right then. You'll probably never notice.

Up the usage and add in more stuff running at once and your machine will "feel sluggish" and it'll be hard to pin down why unless you know where to be looking for the kernel's counters.

Use the system for "servery" stuff, such as a PW private server, and you can quite plausibly see maps and stuff crashing for no discernible reason. As I stated before, it all happens so fast that it's "just a crash" as far as the admin's concerned. Especially if it happens to be collateral damage from something else happening on the system. Remember that shared memory (shmfs) and /tmp (tmpfs) also use your memory/swap, so system cron jobs can foreseeably cause your server to be crashy with insufficient swap.

Seriously, though, if you're using secondhand machines for cheap (you're not the only one, 343, who looks for good deals! :thumbup1:), you probably have a spare drive bay or two. Pick up a cheap 15K 36GB disk, use that for your 1:1 to 1.5:1 swap partition and then the rest for user home directories, "stash space", whatever. It just seems senseless to me to jeopardize stability to save a couple gigs of disk space.

Again, there's no guarantees that any particular installation will ever see a problem. But it certainly can't be ruled out in advance. That's just the way luck works when you're dealing with passing out IOUs. :laugh:

Also, this isn't directed at you, personally, 343. It's more directed at everyone who's interested in how to make the most of their lower-end machines. If we all had servers with 32-64 GB RAM, we wouldn't be in this thread. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lewellyn

Also, this isn't directed at you, personally, 343. It's more directed at everyone who's interested in how to make the most of their lower-end machines. If we all had servers with 32-64 GB RAM, we wouldn't be in this thread. ;)

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Well then I don't even see where any debate or argument would be... I am all for 1:1 / PhysRam:Swp... I just can't see recommending to go any more than that because then you're going to find people thinking it's ok to try to run a PW server (all maps open) on a machine that only physically has 1GB of ram "oh, well it'll be okay as long as I create a 32GB swap" ~~~ NO, It wouldn't :rofl: Then again, yes, I really know that swap is 'necessary' , just from what I know/my experience I wouldn't go above 1:1... Also, with higher and higher amounts I don't 'see' a reason to even keep it 1:1; could I be wrong -- sure I never claimed to 'know it all'. I'm just saying, personally, if I ever had a machine that had 2TB of ram I sure in the hell wouldn't worry about making sure it had a matching (1:1) 2TB swap, rather I'd use 500GB (1:0.25) =O Enter, my 'chart'

Spoiler:

and this isn't just 'my chart' I did find this somewhere else (from some 'expert')

Spoiler:

TABLE:

Code:

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PHYSICAL SYSTEM RAM      SWAP CALCULATOR
0 GB ~ 16GB              P*1.00=s
17 GB ~ 255 GB            P*0.50=s
256 GB +                  P*0.25=s

---

Where:
P = PHYSICAL RAM
* = MULTIPLY
s = MAX swap amount
= = EQUALS

Now if I could only find the true original source of that information =\

&& to be honest, I usually let the system set it / use 'default' values...

Yeah, like I've said, 1:1-1.5:1 is where people should be. Almost every distro sets to 1:1.

I'm willing to bet that by the time that you have 2TB RAM available in a box in front of you for tinkering with, you won't be caring about the 2TB disk space. :laugh: I remember back when 500MB disks were a pipe dream, and now we're stuck for a bit with disks about 6 times that size until EFI takes off. Storage prices drop dramatically over time. :thumbup1:

And if you could find the source to that chart, I'd be curious to see it. I've rarely seen anyone who's actually delved into the guts of Linux memory management advocate less than 1:1 (unless it's "off for specific reasons").

Perhaps one of these days, I'll have to sit down and write a "Swap, PW, and You" guide that shows how to get optimal performance out of swap with PW. (There are a few nifty tricks that seem obvious once you've done them!)

So, discussion is at a rest, I guess. Seems 343 and I agree upon "use 1:1 swap"... :laugh:

LIKE and AGREED

Use 1:1

Spoiler:

cuz ur right, and aint no one HERE gonna be using really nice machines with 256 GB of ram anyway :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Yea, IDK if I will ever have a 2TB(/RAM) machine in my lifetime -- although I've been eying this one: HP ProLiant DL900 Servers - comparison results Small & Medium Business - HP which does support a max of 2TB of DDR3 :lol:

Mmm. I got the first ProLiant I've used in some years a couple months back. I gotta say that HP/Compaq recovered well from their server missteps when they merged. (Though it sure did take them long enough.) Sexy little machines, they are.

By the way, for those of you looking for el-cheapo secondhand servers, you probably shouldn't be looking at things older than about 2005 or so. Prior to that, you'll be finding that their RAM is a lot harder to get. Even better is 2007 or newer. And aim for a "name brand" server such as HP, IBM, or Sun (but make sure it's got a Xeon or Opteron with any of those since IBM and Sun make their own CPUs too!) since "custom built" servers will be harder to make sure you have proper firmware levels for and they're less likely to be 100% supported under Linux. Also, be completely sure you can fit at least 16GB RAM into the server.

(Trying to get the thread back on track, after I derailed it...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by das7002

Code:

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cp gs gs.old
strip gs

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tada

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Allisandre

needed to install binutils, but size of gs before strip was 135,643,138 and the size after was 7,153,892. giving it a shot now, will post my findings.

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From my testing thusfar there is absolutely no difference whatsoever in ram usage...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 343

From my testing thusfar there is absolutely no difference whatsoever in ram usage...

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Meh, I didn't say it would. Debugging symbols memory use is inversely proportional (percentage wise) to the amount of RAM the program uses on its own...

I was really only answering your question on how to get a gs without debugging info in it...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by das7002

Meh, I didn't say it would. Debugging symbols memory use is inversely proportional (percentage wise) to the amount of RAM the program uses on its own...

I was really only answering your question on how to get a gs without debugging info in it...

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I know, I am answering RBB's question... http://forum.ragezone.com/6702824-post13.html

add:

&& personally I didn't think it would, but I am testing that theory anyway...

Oh well it was a nice idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 343

However, there is a method (that I would HIGHLY recommend AGAINST) in which you MAY be able to run all instances (using a single 'instance' of GS) utilizing much less ram (you may be able to get away with 8GB or even 4GB =X

If you desire to try this method start the maps in this manner from the command line (You can start the whole server from pwAdmin, then just stop the world map, leaving everything else running -- Then use the following command to start all maps):

Code:

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./gs gs01 gs.conf gmserver.conf gsalias.conf is01 is02 is05 is06 is07 is08 is09 is10 is11 is12 is13 is14 is15 is16 is17 is18 is19 is20 is21 is22 is23 is24 is25 is26 is27 is28 is29 is31 is32 is33 is34 is35 b05 house1 house2 house3 house4 house5 house6 z9 q20 arena04 arena01 arena02 arena03 jail bg01 bg02 bg03 bg04 bg05 bg06 > /PWServer/logs/gs_all.log &

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Went around and experimented with this today. In short: it does not work as you say, it's just a way to bulk load instances.

What it actually does it gs starts, fork itself and then load the specific map. It might be slightly faster to start up but it does not save any ram (as shown below). It also means once started the maps are fully independent (crash one != crash other).

Load at once (./gs 1 2)

Code:

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$ ps -C gs -o rss,pid,ppid,command
  RSS  PID  PPID COMMAND
80668 18112 17706 ./gs gs01 gsworld.cfg gs.cfg gsworldalias.cfg is20
(few seconds later)
$ ps -C gs -o rss,pid,ppid,command
  RSS  PID  PPID COMMAND
420456 18118    1 ./gs gs01 gsworld.cfg gs.cfg gsworldalias.cfg
134024 18119    1 ./gs is20 gsworld.cfg gs.cfg gsworldalias.cfg

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(notice the parent process becomes 1 as the initial loader dies)

Load separately (./gs 1 ; ./gs 2)

Code:

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$ ps -C gs -o rss,pid,ppid,command
  RSS  PID  PPID COMMAND
419188 18023 17706 ./gs gs01 gsworld.cfg gs.cfg gsworldalias.cfg
133016 18052 17706 ./gs is20 gsworld.cfg gs.cfg gsworldalias.cfg

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I will have to test that in full detail later on... All I know is that my previous tests (on my 32GB server) concluded that my release needs at least 16 GB of ram to run all maps simultaneously and safely... Also, I have never been able to open all maps at the same time on a machine with only 4GB using the 'original method'/"correct" method of loading one map at a time... However I HAVE been able to open all maps simultaneously using the above method on that same 4GB machine; I kept that server 'up' for 7 days before coming to the conclusion that it indeed does use less ram to start all the maps that way... (the server was up 7 days with no crashes)...