[LON-CAPA-admin] memory and httpd processes

[Jim Maxka]

Hi all -- I just want to run this by people to see how crazy I am.  I 
have one access server and a library server, each with 2 GB of physical 
memory.  During high usage times, top shows all of the memory used.  If 
I run, /etc/init.d/httpd reload I can recover up to 500 MB, sometimes 
more.  Performance for users seems to improve.  I tested it with users, 
when they reported lag times when hitting submits and refresh of 
variables passed to applications -- like the jme editor.

Here is an example:
#####before reload
Mem:   2074928k total,  1990800k used,    84128k free,   351024k buffers
Swap:  2337416k total,      224k used,  2337192k free,   960936k cached
[root at loncapa jmol]# /etc/init.d/httpd reload
Reloading httpd:                                           [  OK  ]
####after reload
Mem:   2074928k total,  1598448k used,   476480k free,   343740k buffers
Swap:  2337416k total,      224k used,  2337192k free,   797400k cached

Right now I do this manually, but I was wondering if it would be worth 
writing a cron job to do this more often.  Or am I completely making 
something up here?  thanks -- jim