Howdy folks ... I have a VMware server with three VMs, each installed with Ubuntu 16.04, 64 bit; VMs 1 & 2 were created with 2GB RAM and VM 3 with 4GB. After installing Boinc (7.6.31 x64), everything ran fine (with World Community Grid projects); however, when I later increased RAM on VMs 1 & 2 from 2GB to 4GB (shutting down the OS, then VM, before restarting), they're still only using 2.43GB and 1.96GB RAM respectively after almost 24 hours. VM 3 has been consistently using 4.09GB. How can I make VM 1 & 2 use more memory? All Boinc instances are set to use 75% max memory when computer is 'in use', 100% when not; none of the servers are being used for anything else.

Many thanks!

Does VMs 1 and 2 have any tasks that would use that much memory?

How do you measure used memory? Modern operating systems use all RAM that would otherwise be free as filesystem cache.

Hi Juha, thanks for your reply. I just checked Boinc Manager and they're all running two tasks: 1 for each configured CPU, I guess. All three VMs are doing (exclusively) the same thing: running Boinc against WCG projects, so they *should* be using the same amount of RAM. I got the figures from the VMware management GUI ... hopefully you can see this screen grab:

[img]
https://goo.gl/photos/zZRhSjF2rK1zPP3K9
[/img]

The VM1 & 2 figures are creeping up ... although still a long way from that of VM3.

I think what VMware is reporting is how much host memory it has allocated for each of the VMs. VMware allocates more memory from host as VMs access their RAM. It doesn't tell how the VMs are using the memory.

Open a terminal or console and run 'free' on all of the VMs. free tells how the memory is being used. You can also use BOINC Manager and check properties of running tasks. Working set size tells how much memory the task is using.

For example, here is output of free from one of my hosts:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       3082020    2967664     114356      73200      23388     860912
-/+ buffers/cache:    2083364     998656
Swap:      3048408     765268    2283140

This host has 3 GB of RAM of which almost all is used. However, close to 900 MB is used for filesystem cache and such.

Hi Juha,

Here are the outputs:

VM1:
rhino@dizzy:~$ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 4046576 762312 1812728 9632 1471536 2989456
Swap: 2097148 0 2097148

VM2:
rhino@pierre:~$ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 4046576 756724 2216336 9768 1073516 3004296
Swap: 2097148 0 2097148

VM3:
rhino@corinne:~$ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 4046728 811404 523088 15028 2712236 3159008
Swap: 4194300 0 4194300

Sorry, I don't know how to use a non-proportional font here to line up the columns. Also, I can't see how to insert pics directly, as you did.

Many thanks, R.
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Also, I can't see how to insert pics directly, as you did.

You did:

[img]
https://goo.gl/photos/zZRhSjF2rK1zPP3K9
[/img]

But it's

[img]https://goo.gl/photos/zZRhSjF2rK1zPP3K9[/img]

All in one line.
But the image tag requires an image extension, such as .png, .jpg, .gif or .bmp, it won't work with a 'short' link.

In that case, just link to it using:

[url]https://goo.gl/photos/zZRhSjF2rK1zPP3K9[/url]

Making: https://goo.gl/photos/zZRhSjF2rK1zPP3K9

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How much memory is actually used in the VM depends on the applications that are started by BOINC. In your case the WCG subprojects. From the outputs you posted it looks like VM3 uses a bit more shared and buffer than the others but in general the values in the used column are the same. So unless you have an idle CPU in VM1 or VM2 you don't need to worry.

Thanks Jord, very helpful!

Thanks Christian,

There are no idle CPUs in VM1 & 2; maybe I'll experiment with adding more sub-projects.

Cheers, A.