freebsd stable - Mar 2017 - slow machine, swap in use, but more than 5GB of RAM inactive

On Tue, 7 Mar 2017 10:19:35 +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > I wonder about the slow speed of my machine while top shows ample
 > inactive memory:

( quoting from this top output because it's neater :)

 > last pid: 85287;  load averages:  2.56,  2.44, 1.68 
 > up 6+10:24:45 10:13:36 191 processes: 5 running, 186 sleeping 
 > CPU 0: 47.1% user,  0.0% nice, 51.4% system, 0.0% interrupt,  1.6% idle 
 > CPU 1: 38.4% user,  0.0% nice, 60.4% system,  0.0% interrupt, 1.2% idle 
 > CPU 2: 38.8% user,  0.0% nice, 59.2% system,  0.0% interrupt, 2.0% idle 
 > CPU 3: 45.5% user,  0.0% nice, 51.0% system,  0.4% interrupt, 3.1% idle 
 > Mem: 677M Active, 5600M Inact, 1083M Wired, 178M Cache, 816M Buf,301M
 > Free 
 > Swap: 16G Total, 1352M Used, 15G Free, 8% Inuse

Others have covered the swap / inactive memory issue.

But I'd expect this to be slow, for any new work anyway .. there's next 
to no idle on any CPU.  I'd be asking, what's all of that system usage?

cheers, Ian

Hi,

On Tue, 7 Mar 2017 23:30:58 +1100 (EST)
Ian Smith <smithi at nimnet.asn.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Mar 2017 10:19:35 +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  > 
>  > I wonder about the slow speed of my machine while top shows ample
>  > inactive memory:  
> 
> ( quoting from this top output because it's neater :)
> 
>  > last pid: 85287;  load averages:  2.56,  2.44, 1.68 
>  > up 6+10:24:45 10:13:36 191 processes: 5 running, 186 sleeping 
>  > CPU 0: 47.1% user,  0.0% nice, 51.4% system, 0.0% interrupt,  1.6%
>  > idle CPU 1: 38.4% user,  0.0% nice, 60.4% system,  0.0% interrupt,
>  > 1.2% idle CPU 2: 38.8% user,  0.0% nice, 59.2% system,  0.0%
>  > interrupt, 2.0% idle CPU 3: 45.5% user,  0.0% nice, 51.0% system,
>  > 0.4% interrupt, 3.1% idle Mem: 677M Active, 5600M Inact, 1083M
>  > Wired, 178M Cache, 816M Buf,301M Free 
>  > Swap: 16G Total, 1352M Used, 15G Free, 8% Inuse  
> 
> Others have covered the swap / inactive memory issue.
> 
> But I'd expect this to be slow, for any new work anyway .. there's
> next to no idle on any CPU.  I'd be asking, what's all of that
system
> usage?
> 
this is building ports in the background. Still, used doing this ones a
month, I know the feeling when the ports are updated. This one was
really slow. Hopefully, it was just an unlucky coincidence.

I rebooted meanwhile the machine. It is faster now, I would say, it is
back to normal now. It did not come to its limits since the new start.
It is now on:

FreeBSD 10.3-STABLE #3 r314363

Erich