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Swapping problem for Rails app
  • alexandre
    I have a Rails 2.3.8 app hosted and running on slicehost (256M). I am not familiar at all with the back-end, I basically followed the steps from the slicehost tutorials to install Apache. The memory usage being very high, I then changed my Apache conf file to reduce the MaxClient number to 10... but my slice is still swapping.

    Here is what the memory usage I get after just a few clicks on my site:

    top - 23:57:12 up 28 min, 2 users, load average: 0.43, 0.54, 0.30
    Tasks: 79 total, 1 running, 78 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
    Cpu(s): 0.1%us, 0.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.8%id, 0.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 2.0%st
    Mem: 262364k total, 258656k used, 3708k free, 260k buffers
    Swap: 524280k total, 262772k used, 261508k free, 6328k cached

    PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
    4004 web-app 20 0 178m 72m 1888 S 0 28.4 0:04.38 ruby1.8
    4001 web-app 20 0 172m 61m 1932 S 0 24.2 0:02.72 ruby1.8
    3941 root 20 0 164m 57m 1672 S 0 22.5 0:21.44 ruby
    3990 web-app 20 0 209m 21m 1696 S 0 8.4 0:18.00 ruby1.8
    3950 web-app 20 0 165m 7464 1548 S 0 2.8 0:20.40 ruby1.8
    3684 mysql 20 0 224m 6504 2084 S 0 2.5 0:14.34 mysqld
    3938 root 20 0 53632 3048 1036 S 1 1.2 0:01.50 starling
    3839 root 20 0 243m 1456 1248 S 0 0.6 0:00.34 apache2
    3897 www-data 20 0 243m 1452 1072 S 0 0.6 0:00.04 apache2
    3894 www-data 20 0 243m 1368 1008 S 0 0.5 0:00.04 apache2
    3895 www-data 20 0 243m 1220 960 S 0 0.5 0:00.02 apache2
    3888 root 20 0 46520 1204 1100 S 0 0.5 0:02.29 ruby1.8
    3866 root 20 0 17648 1184 896 S 0 0.5 0:00.08 bash
    3896 www-data 20 0 243m 1180 952 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2
    3964 www-data 20 0 243m 1164 956 S 0 0.4 0:00.02 apache2
    3892 www-data 20 0 243m 1132 956 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2
    3948 www-data 20 0 243m 1132 956 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2
    3962 www-data 20 0 243m 1132 956 S 0 0.4 0:00.02 apache2
    3963 www-data 20 0 243m 1132 956 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2
    3965 www-data 20 0 243m 1080 888 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 apache2
    3887 root 20 0 89008 960 796 S 0 0.4 0:00.00 ApplicationPool


    I'm not sure what to do next... I could upgrade to a larger slice but for now I have almost no traffic on this app, so I think it's more a problem with my configuration or maybe my code?

    Any concrete recommendations would be welcome! Thanks
  • matiumatiu

    So you have 262772k used swap .. that's a lot and will likely cause a noticeable slowdown.

    Also I'd like to point out that the 22% memory usage per ruby process is 22% of what all programs are using .. so might be more than 22% of actual RAM .. if you get my drift .. so it'll always add up to 100% .. but might be 250% of RAM.

    I'd look at using less ruby processes .. if you're using 'mongrels' for deployment .. maybe look at using fusion passenger.

    This link has a lot of good info.

    Also if you can rebuild to a 32 bit Slice, that might help a bit .. 32 bit generally uses a little less RAM. NB: 'rebuild' == wipe the Slice clean, including any rails installations..

  • .
    Switch to 32 bit slice, install http://www.rubyenterpriseedition.com/ instead of your distros ruby, use passenger, all those will help but on a 256 box you'll have a hard time handling many clients using RoR.
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