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The –m option is very popular it displays the shared memory segments. To display information about shared memory segments, IPC message queues, and semaphores, you can use a single command: ipcs. The processes send messages to each other (“inter-process communication”, or IPC) and use semaphores. There could be one or many shared memory segments by this process. When a process runs, it grabs from the “shared memory”. In the third case you should use the ps command (described in an earlier installment of this series) to identify the specific process that might be leaking memory. In the second case, you should try to reduce the large buffer allocation in queries. A general rule of thumb is to use about 40 percent of the physical memory for SGA, but of course you should define that parameter based on your specific situation.
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Some degree of swapping is probably inevitable but a lot of swapping is indicative of lack of free memory. So, how can you use this command to manage the Linux server running your Oracle environment? One of the most common causes of performance issues is the lack of memory, causing the system to “swap” memory areas into the disk temporarily. The difference could be attributed to the consumption by the backup application. For instance, check the free memory before starting the backup application and then check it immediately after starting.
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You can use free to watch the memory load exerted by an application. What’s more, a very useful option, –m, shows free memory in megabytes: The free command answers all those questions. So an ancillary question is, “How much swap is being used?” One common question is, “How much memory is being used by my applications and various server, user, and system processes?” Or, “How much memory is free right now?” If the memory used by the running processes is more than the available RAM, the processes are moved to swap. You should know multiple commands to get the information you want. In most cases, a single command may not be useful to understand what really is going on. iostat for I/O-but you should understand the differences in their workings and use the ones you are more comfortable with. Some commands are better suited to some components-e.g. This is due to the fact that the commands can perform many tasks. As you can see, some commands appear in more than one category.
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