Re: [squid-users] Squid slowness over time ...

Yep. Squid is definitely starving for memory.

It is possible to run a lean Squid, even lean enough to run in 64MB of
RAM, but your time is probably more valuable than 50 bucks for another
256MB of RAM, as you'll need to shrink everything on your system along
with Squid to make it fit comfortably in 64MB. ;-)

Troubleshooting problems is kind of a practice thing. It takes time to
know how to match symptoms to potential problems, but the more you know
about your system and the Unix Way, the better off you'll be.

I rely very heavily on top, df, netstat, ps, locate, and tcpdump,
probably in that order (and often in combination with other Unix tools
like grep) when I'm faced with a new system that has problems I'm not
familiar with. There are man pages for nearly every command on any Unix
system (though many of the gnu tools are prejudiced against man and only
give you complete docs in info pages...so you'll need to spend an hour
or two deciphering the info info page to be able to read those docs in
that abominable format--oops, my prejudice against info is showing ;-).
  As you've already figured out, the cachemgr is the best place for
Squid troubleshooting information (beyond "does it have enough memory",
as that is easier to spot from the system perspective). A search of the
archives will help you figure that stuff out, most likely, but if not, ask.

I've written a two page Red Hat quick reference card which might have
some information that you'll find nice to have around while you're learning:

http://www.swelltech.com/support/pdfs/RedHatCard.pdf

There's a lot of other documentation about Squid, Red Hat, etc. at our
site, as well. I'll assume you already know about the Linux
Documentation Project (and if you don't you now know to search for it),
which is an excellent resource. The Squid docs at Visolve are a good
start on Squid issues, and may help clarify the squid.conf file and
Squid FAQ for you.

Justin Hennessy wrote:
> Thanks for that Joe, I will be out to get the book today. *grin*
>
> Below is the current memory usage of my dedicated squid server:
>
> Mem: 61800K av, 60012K used, 1788K free, 12K shrd,
> 1724K buff
> Swap: 152576K av, 46056K used, 106520K free
> 16944K cached
>
>>From what you were saying the swap is too big.
>
> I have just found out that there is only 64M of memory in this machine.
> This is probably the problem.
>
> Having said that though I just wanted to know what the process was for
> identifying problems on a Linux system (as I am fairly new to server
> admin on this platform).

-- 
Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com>
Web caching appliances and support.
http://www.swelltech.com