New 64 bit linux system has regular processes (ps, grep etc) taking up way too much VIRT mem

Posted by user42980 on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by user42980
Published on 2010-05-12T23:56:51Z Indexed on 2010/05/13 0:04 UTC
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We just moved from a 32-bit machine to a 64-bit machine. We have quickly ran out of memory despite the new boxes have twice as much ram as the old boxes.

Running a simple ps command will illustrate the problem.
New machine:
132 prod-Charlotte1-node1 ~/public_html/rearch/cgi-bin> ps aux | grep ps
root 293 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May09 0:00 [kpsmoused]
xamine 2267 1.0 0.0 63728 928 pts/3 R+ 16:50 0:00 ps aux
xamine 2268 0.0 0.0 61172 752 pts/3 S+ 16:50 0:00 grep ps

Old machine:
132 prod-116431-node1:/home/xamine> ps aux | grep ps
xamine 23191 0.0 0.0 2332 768 pts/6 R+ 15:41 0:00 ps aux
xamine 23192 0.0 0.0 3668 692 pts/6 S+ 15:41 0:00 grep ps


Notice that the ps process is using 63M of VIRT mem vs 2 on the old machine. New Machine: Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Carthage) Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Tikanga) Old Machine: Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 4)

Thanks for any thoughts you have!

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