running snow leopard server on a macbook

[twoodcc]

so i have it running on a mid 2007 white macbook (2.16 ghz, 2 GB RAM) and i've got everything running pretty good.

but i don't have enough RAM. i've attached a photo of activity monitor.

my VM size if over 325 GB in size.

i've also just restarted it, and i've already got page ins and page outs. before i restarted i have like 10 GB of Page ins.

should i just forget running my server on the macbook?

 

[talmy]

You have a memory problem if the amount of page outs exceeds page ins, which is not the case. Large amounts of Virtual Memory used is not a problem. If it were real memory, that would be a problem. Your screen shot shows plenty of unused memory (Inactive memory can be used if needed).

A "page in" occurs when the processor wants to access data that isn't currently in RAM, so it has to read it from the disk. This is abundant in normal operation. A "page out" occurs when there isn't enough room in RAM for an application to run, so some contents of RAM have to be moved to disk. This is what hurts performance and indicates that it would be time to add RAM.

But the real problem is that except for the education a notebook computer should not be used as a server. They are not designed to be run 24/7, are generally too slow, and are effectively a waste of money since portability, keyboard, and display are not needed. Only positive thing is they have a built-in UPS.

 

[twoodcc]

You have a memory problem if the amount of page outs exceeds page ins, which is not the case. Large amounts of Virtual Memory used is not a problem. If it were real memory, that would be a problem. Your screen shot shows plenty of unused memory (Inactive memory can be used if needed).

A "page in" occurs when the processor wants to access data that isn't currently in RAM, so it has to read it from the disk. This is abundant in normal operation. A "page out" occurs when there isn't enough room in RAM for an application to run, so some contents of RAM have to be moved to disk. This is what hurts performance and indicates that it would be time to add RAM.

But the real problem is that except for the education a notebook computer should not be used as a server. They are not designed to be run 24/7, are generally too slow, and are effectively a waste of money since portability, keyboard, and display are not needed. Only positive thing is they have a built-in UPS.

thank you for that reply. keep in mind that the screenshot is shortly after a restart. before that, the machine was up for about 40 days or so.

i know notebooks aren't good servers. this is a learning experience, and at the current time, was the only machine available and was up to the task. i will move to a desktop eventually

 

[talmy]

thank you for that reply. keep in mind that the screenshot is shortly after a restart. before that, the machine was up for about 40 days or so.

Yes, but the values are fine. The important thing is Page Outs anyway.

Just looking at my server (Mac mini Server, 4GB RAM), which has been up 4 days, there are 943,000 page ins and 2,000 page outs. The VM size is 266GB. It's using 3.2GB of RAM, but only 1.2GB is "wired" which means it cannot be swapped out. Note that the box is also running a Windows XP virtual machine, and that's probably taking half of the space.

 

[twoodcc]

Yes, but the values are fine. The important thing is Page Outs anyway.

Just looking at my server (Mac mini Server, 4GB RAM), which has been up 4 days, there are 943,000 page ins and 2,000 page outs. The VM size is 266GB. It's using 3.2GB of RAM, but only 1.2GB is "wired" which means it cannot be swapped out. Note that the box is also running a Windows XP virtual machine, and that's probably taking half of the space.

well right now the VM size is 310 GB. Page ins - 235.3 MB, page outs - 61.3 MB.