[Paraview] Linux memory problems exclusive to Paraview

Chuck Atkins chuck.atkins at kitware.com
Thu Jan 21 11:29:22 EST 2016


>
> This will mean that Paraview will have very little memory available to it
> (confirmed using Memory inspector) and it will be very slow!
>

The Memory inspector can't really be relied on right now because it
includes cached memory in the "used" total.  Basically it's reporting Total
- Free, where free is completely unused by anything.  In reality, you
actually have Free + Cached available for use as the kernel will prioritize
application memory requests over background kernel cache.  When looking at
top you should see the following memory categories:

   - Total - All memory present on the system
   - Free - Memory that is entirely free and clear, not used by anything
   - Used - Memory being directly used by applications and kernel
   - Buff / Cache - Memory that the kernel manages to keep frequently
   accessed data

The Buff / Cache is what usually gets ignored and / or misinterpreted.
While it is being used by the kernel, it's also available to be reclaimed
by applications once the Free memory is exhausted.  So when looking at top,
the memory you have available for application use is Total - Used, which
should equal Free + Cached.  Memory inspector misreports this.
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