Debian Sarge memory release problem

[luxpops]

Hi I'm new the linux, I just installed Debian Sarge 3.1 for my project and updated the kernel to 2.6.16.7

I installed gnome to run vmware server beta on it (can I run vmware server without installing gnome for the interface?)

the problem is when running gnome it doesn't release the memory from closed application (i think) each time I open and close an application, it doesn't free up the memory

any idea on how to fix that?

[falko]

the problem is when running gnome it doesn't release the memory from closed application (i think) each time I open and close an application, it doesn't free up the memory

What let's you think this? Where do you see this?

[luxpops]

Because I check "system monitor" to see how bad is the CPU usage when running virtual machine and when I run the virtual machine the memory usage goes up by for example 512MB for a virtual machine with 512MB (I got 2GB on the host machine) so i guess that is normal but after I shutdown the virtual machine and close the vmware server application the memory doesn't go down or just by a little, I checked the running service (again in system monitor)

every time I run a new virtual machine the memory usage will build up.

I didn't have that memory problem with debian kernel 2.4 but I couldn't make it support 2GB of memory

update: I have seen the same problem happening when using other applications and the problem has been replicated to the second machine I got for my project with the same specs and setup as the first

[falko]

Linux usually uses a lot of memory, but the question is how does it use it? Normally it caches a lot of data, that's why it uses lots of memory, but it can release this memory if needed.
You can install a monitoring tool like munin that lets you see how your memory is used.

[luxpops]

thanks for your help Falko I guess i'm not used to Linux yet so I don't know about the memory management, because the weird thing was that the system was using most of the ram available if not all of it but still run fine.

Munin is a server monitoring software from what I read, I actually need one. I'ld like to ask if it can monitor Novell Netwar and windows 2003 server as well??

I found Zabbix that can monitor windows 2003 server and Novell server, do you have any thoughts on that software?

[falko]

Munin is a server monitoring software from what I read, I actually need one. I'ld like to ask if it can monitor Novell Netwar and windows 2003 server as well??I don't know, however I've just finished a tutorial about munin on localhost: http://www.howtoforge.com/server_monitoring_monit_munin

I found Zabbix that can monitor windows 2003 server and Novell server, do you have any thoughts on that software?I haven't tried Zabbix, but we have a tutorial for it as well: http://www.howtoforge.com/zabbix_network_monitoring :)

[luxpops]

Hi Falko

I tried to install zabbix following the tutorial on howtoforge that you gave
but I got some kind of errors when I do this part

4 - Configure, compile and install the server

We run an agent on the server to so we compile that too ;)

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-mysql --with-net-snmp \
--enable-server --enable-agent &&
make
su
make install
exit

i got this

root@server:/home/zabbix/zabbix-1.0# su
root@server:/home/zabbix/zabbix-1.0# make install
make: *** No rule to make target `install-recursive', needed by `install'. Stop.
root@server:/home/zabbix/zabbix-1.0# exit

how do I fix this??

[falko]

Please run all the steps as root!