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    Memory reporting incorrect values

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    • planedropP Offline
      planedrop Top contributor @fred974
      last edited by

      @fred974 This is normal behavior, most modern OSes will use up as much RAM as they possibly can for caching, unused RAM is wasted RAM.

      I'd adjust your alert settings if you're getting high RAM usage alerts. You also could change things in the OS to prevent as much RAM being used for caching, but I'd avoid that if possible.

      The OS reports, via the tools, to the hypervisor about it's RAM usage, so if the OS is caching a lot, and therefore using most of it's RAM, it will report that to the hypervisor.

      I think, could be wrong, Windows doesn't report cached RAM via the tools so it may show "real" RAM usage, but this is OS specific stuff and not really XCP-ng or any hypervisor specific stuff.

      J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • olivierlambertO Offline
        olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
        last edited by

        Adding @yann and @TeddyAstie in the convo (since we maybe need to report both, IDK)

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TeddyAstieT Online
          TeddyAstie Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team Xen Guru
          last edited by TeddyAstie

          It could be interesting to report all the information the guest can provide us, but there is no xenstore schema for that; and no support from xcp-rrdd either.

          Aside that, I don't think xe-guest-utilities consider cache memory as used; but there may be corner cases.
          What gives cat /proc/meminfo

          F yannY 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • J Offline
            jebrown @planedrop
            last edited by

            @planedrop I'm using "citrix" tools for windows and I haven't noticed any of mine reporting any cached ram. Yet
            cached ram.png status.png

            planedropP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • planedropP Offline
              planedrop Top contributor @jebrown
              last edited by

              @jebrown OK good to know. This may be different on different OSes though, Windows may just report actually used RAM and leave out anything that is cached.

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              • F Offline
                fred974 @TeddyAstie
                last edited by fred974

                Thank you all for your feedback on this matter. The OS used in this case ins Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS.

                @TeddyAstie said in Memory reporting incorrect values:

                What gives cat /proc/meminfo

                cat /proc/meminfo
                MemTotal:        8123972 kB
                MemFree:          440556 kB
                MemAvailable:    5419780 kB
                Buffers:          410852 kB
                Cached:          4761852 kB
                SwapCached:          328 kB
                Active:          2995088 kB
                Inactive:        3405912 kB
                Active(anon):     723800 kB
                Inactive(anon):  1399348 kB
                Active(file):    2271288 kB
                Inactive(file):  2006564 kB
                Unevictable:       27620 kB
                Mlocked:           27620 kB
                SwapTotal:       4194300 kB
                SwapFree:        4191228 kB
                Dirty:              1508 kB
                Writeback:             0 kB
                AnonPages:       1255676 kB
                Mapped:           939728 kB
                Shmem:            885788 kB
                KReclaimable:     995468 kB
                Slab:            1154076 kB
                SReclaimable:     995468 kB
                SUnreclaim:       158608 kB
                KernelStack:        4656 kB
                PageTables:        13848 kB
                NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
                Bounce:                0 kB
                WritebackTmp:          0 kB
                CommitLimit:     8256284 kB
                Committed_AS:    5873420 kB
                VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
                VmallocUsed:       18896 kB
                VmallocChunk:          0 kB
                Percpu:             4192 kB
                HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
                AnonHugePages:         0 kB
                ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
                ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
                FileHugePages:         0 kB
                FilePmdMapped:         0 kB
                HugePages_Total:       0
                HugePages_Free:        0
                HugePages_Rsvd:        0
                HugePages_Surp:        0
                Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
                Hugetlb:               0 kB
                DirectMap4k:      307200 kB
                DirectMap2M:     8077312 kB
                DirectMap1G:     1048576 kB
                
                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • yannY Offline
                  yann Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @TeddyAstie
                  last edited by

                  @fred974 the tools should be reporting the value from MemAvailable, so buffer/cache should not be considered as in-use. What do you see (reported by the agent) in xenstore ?

                  From within the guest:

                  # xenstore ls data
                  meminfo_free = "324060"
                  meminfo_total = "973736"
                  os_distro = "Debian"
                  os_name = "Debian 11"
                  os_uname = "5.10.0-21-amd64"
                  updated = "1"
                  

                  The meminfo_free should match what you see in /proc/meminfo.

                  F 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • F Offline
                    fred974 @yann
                    last edited by

                    @yann said in Memory reporting incorrect values:

                    xenstore ls data

                    Here is what I see:
                    cat /proc/meminfo

                    MemTotal:        8123972 kB
                    MemFree:          428388 kB
                    MemAvailable:    5419696 kB
                    Buffers:          411604 kB
                    Cached:          4771524 kB
                    SwapCached:          328 kB
                    Active:          3060024 kB
                    Inactive:        3339116 kB
                    Active(anon):     736300 kB
                    Inactive(anon):  1374628 kB
                    Active(file):    2323724 kB
                    Inactive(file):  1964488 kB
                    Unevictable:       27620 kB
                    Mlocked:           27620 kB
                    SwapTotal:       4194300 kB
                    SwapFree:        4191228 kB
                    Dirty:               284 kB
                    Writeback:             0 kB
                    AnonPages:       1243360 kB
                    Mapped:           919268 kB
                    Shmem:            885852 kB
                    KReclaimable:     997192 kB
                    Slab:            1155308 kB
                    SReclaimable:     997192 kB
                    SUnreclaim:       158116 kB
                    KernelStack:        4432 kB
                    PageTables:        13128 kB
                    NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
                    Bounce:                0 kB
                    WritebackTmp:          0 kB
                    CommitLimit:     8256284 kB
                    Committed_AS:    5854320 kB
                    VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
                    VmallocUsed:       18656 kB
                    VmallocChunk:          0 kB
                    Percpu:             4192 kB
                    HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
                    AnonHugePages:         0 kB
                    ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
                    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
                    FileHugePages:         0 kB
                    FilePmdMapped:         0 kB
                    HugePages_Total:       0
                    HugePages_Free:        0
                    HugePages_Rsvd:        0
                    HugePages_Surp:        0
                    Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
                    Hugetlb:               0 kB
                    DirectMap4k:      307200 kB
                    DirectMap2M:     8077312 kB
                    DirectMap1G:     1048576 kB
                    

                    xenstore ls data

                    meminfo_free = "422892"
                    meminfo_total = "8123972"
                    os_distro = "ubuntu"
                    os_majorver = "22"
                    os_minorver = "04"
                    os_name = "Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS"
                    os_uname = "5.15.0-128-generic"
                    updated = "Mon Jan  6 11:52:45 2025"
                    volumes = ""
                     0 = ""
                      extents = ""
                       0 = "xvda"
                      filesystem = "ext4"
                      free = "142059319296"
                      mount_points = ""
                       0 = "/"
                      name = "/dev/xvda1(072768fc-9db5-4fa4-a6a1-c98afdd82d32)"
                      size = "171682283008"
                     1 = ""
                      extents = ""
                       0 = "xvda"
                      free = "4138934272"
                      name = "/dev/xvda14"
                      size = "4194304"
                     2 = ""
                      extents = ""
                       0 = "xvda"
                      filesystem = "vfat"
                      free = "103057408"
                      mount_points = ""
                       0 = "/boot/efi"
                      name = "/dev/xvda15(D9A6-D2AA)"
                      size = "111149056"
                     3 = ""
                      extents = ""
                       0 = "xvdb"
                      free = "4138934272"
                      name = "/dev/xvdb1(355A-4FC2)"
                      size = "10486272"
                    

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                    F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • F Offline
                      fred974 @fred974
                      last edited by

                      It would be great to have a bit for details on the memory so we can monitor the system better.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • F Offline
                        fred974 @yann
                        last edited by

                        @yann said in Memory reporting incorrect values:

                        @fred974 the tools should be reporting the value from MemAvailable, so buffer/cache should not be considered as in-use.

                        Doesn't seem to be the case

                        yannY 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • yannY Offline
                          yann Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @fred974
                          last edited by

                          @fred974 right, it is reporting MemFree here.

                          What does xenstore ls attr/PVAddons show for this VM? And which kernel version is it using?

                          Old xe-guest-utilities before v7.30 indeed reported MemFree, which XenServer then improved in v8.4 to still report something for kernels older than 3.14 which did not have MemAvailable yet, but Ubuntu 22.04 ships a decently-recent kernel, so I suspect it would be rather due to an old xe-guest-utilities.

                          F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • F Offline
                            fred974 @yann
                            last edited by

                            @yann said in Memory reporting incorrect values:

                            What does xenstore ls attr/PVAddons show for this VM? And which kernel version is it using?

                            BuildVersion = "0"
                            Installed = "1"
                            MajorVersion = "6"
                            MicroVersion = "80"
                            MinorVersion = "6"
                            

                            hostnamectl status

                               Static hostname: WEB1-OLS-QHUK
                            Transient hostname: web1-ols-qh-uk
                                     Icon name: computer-vm
                                       Chassis: vm
                                    Machine ID: 3b1da9b8e5cf4ecda845219bxxx
                                       Boot ID: 19308dbfd7d347c699985e82xxx
                                Virtualization: xen
                              Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS              
                                        Kernel: Linux 5.15.0-128-generic
                                  Architecture: x86-64
                               Hardware Vendor: Xen
                                Hardware Model: HVM domU
                            
                            yannY 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • yannY Offline
                              yann Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @fred974
                              last edited by

                              @fred974 v6.80.6 is definitely very old, and did report MemFree, we ship v7.30 with XCP-ng 8.2. You will likely want to update it, from the "XCP-ng tools" SR.

                              F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • F Offline
                                fred974 @yann
                                last edited by

                                @yann said in Memory reporting incorrect values:

                                @fred974 v6.80.6 is definitely very old, and did report MemFree, we ship v7.30 with XCP-ng 8.2. You will likely want to update it, from the "XCP-ng tools" SR.

                                Probably because I installed xe-guest-utilities from ububtu repo.. I tried to update from the CD and got the following error:
                                bash /mnt/Linux/install.sh

                                Detected `Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS' (ubuntu version 22).
                                
                                The following changes will be made to this Virtual Machine:
                                  * update arp_notify sysctl.
                                  * packages to be installed/upgraded:
                                    - xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb
                                
                                Continue? [y/n] y
                                
                                (Reading database ... 136958 files and directories currently installed.)
                                Preparing to unpack .../xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb ...
                                Unpacking xe-guest-utilities (7.30.0-12) over (7.20.2-0ubuntu1~22.04.2) ...
                                dpkg: error processing archive /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb (--install):
                                 trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/xenstore', which is also in package xenstore-utils 4.16.0-1~ubuntu2.1
                                dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
                                Errors were encountered while processing:
                                 /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb
                                

                                Could anyone advice of how to fix this issue? I tried apt remove xe-guest-utilities and got the same error

                                yannY 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • yannY Offline
                                  yann Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @fred974
                                  last edited by

                                  @fred974 there is an undeclared conflict between the xe-guest-utilities in the ISO and xenstore-utils, you can install the former after removing the latter (but yes, it is a problem, the Go implementation of xenstore tools should not be in this package).

                                  F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • F Offline
                                    fred974 @yann
                                    last edited by

                                    @yann I removed the tools using apt remove xe-guest-utilities and tried to install from the cd and had the same error
                                    apt remove xe-guest-utilities

                                    Reading package lists... Done
                                    Building dependency tree... Done
                                    Reading state information... Done
                                    The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
                                      dbconfig-common dbconfig-mysql icc-profiles-free libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libjs-bootstrap4 libjs-codemirror libjs-jquery-mousewheel libjs-jquery-timepicker libjs-jquery-ui libjs-popper.js libjs-sizzle liblua5.3-0 libmcrypt4 node-jquery php-common php-google-recaptcha php-mariadb-mysql-kbs
                                      php-nikic-fast-route php-phpmyadmin-motranslator php-phpmyadmin-shapefile php-phpseclib php-psr-cache php-psr-container php-psr-log php-symfony-cache php-symfony-cache-contracts php-symfony-dependency-injection php-symfony-deprecation-contracts php-symfony-expression-language php-symfony-polyfill-php80
                                      php-symfony-polyfill-php81 php-symfony-service-contracts php-symfony-var-exporter php-tcpdf ssl-cert
                                    Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
                                    The following packages will be REMOVED:
                                      xe-guest-utilities
                                    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 16 not upgraded.
                                    After this operation, 1889 kB disk space will be freed.
                                    N: Ignoring file 'mariadb.list.old_1' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
                                    Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
                                    (Reading database ... 136958 files and directories currently installed.)
                                    Removing xe-guest-utilities (7.20.2-0ubuntu1~22.04.2) ...
                                    needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed
                                    root@WEB1-OLS-QHUK:/home/fetheve/Linux# apt autoremove
                                    Reading package lists... Done
                                    Building dependency tree... Done
                                    Reading state information... Done
                                    The following packages will be REMOVED:
                                      dbconfig-common dbconfig-mysql icc-profiles-free libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libjs-bootstrap4 libjs-codemirror libjs-jquery-mousewheel libjs-jquery-timepicker libjs-jquery-ui libjs-popper.js libjs-sizzle liblua5.3-0 libmcrypt4 node-jquery php-common php-google-recaptcha php-mariadb-mysql-kbs
                                      php-nikic-fast-route php-phpmyadmin-motranslator php-phpmyadmin-shapefile php-phpseclib php-psr-cache php-psr-container php-psr-log php-symfony-cache php-symfony-cache-contracts php-symfony-dependency-injection php-symfony-deprecation-contracts php-symfony-expression-language php-symfony-polyfill-php80
                                      php-symfony-polyfill-php81 php-symfony-service-contracts php-symfony-var-exporter php-tcpdf ssl-cert
                                    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 36 to remove and 15 not upgraded.
                                    After this operation, 42.0 MB disk space will be freed.
                                    N: Ignoring file 'mariadb.list.old_1' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
                                    Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
                                    (Reading database ... 136950 files and directories currently installed.)
                                    Removing dbconfig-mysql (2.0.21) ...
                                    Removing dbconfig-common (2.0.21) ...
                                    Removing php-tcpdf (6.4.4+dfsg1-1) ...
                                    Removing icc-profiles-free (2.0.1+dfsg-1.1) ...
                                    Removing libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3:amd64 (1.6.1-5ubuntu4.22.04.2) ...
                                    Removing libaprutil1-ldap:amd64 (1.6.1-5ubuntu4.22.04.2) ...
                                    Removing libjs-bootstrap4 (4.6.0+dfsg1-4) ...
                                    Removing libjs-codemirror (5.65.0+~cs5.83.9-1) ...
                                    Removing libjs-jquery-mousewheel (1:3.1.13-5) ...
                                    Removing libjs-jquery-timepicker (1.6.3-1) ...
                                    Removing libjs-jquery-ui (1.13.1+dfsg-1) ...
                                    Removing libjs-popper.js (1.16.1+ds-5) ...
                                    Removing libjs-sizzle (2.3.6+ds+~2.3.3-1) ...
                                    Removing liblua5.3-0:amd64 (5.3.6-1build1) ...
                                    Removing libmcrypt4 (2.5.8-7) ...
                                    Removing node-jquery (3.6.0+dfsg+~3.5.13-1) ...
                                    Removing php-phpmyadmin-motranslator (5.2.0-1build1) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-expression-language (5.4.4+dfsg-1ubuntu8) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-cache (5.4.4+dfsg-1ubuntu8) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-var-exporter (5.4.4+dfsg-1ubuntu8) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-dependency-injection (5.4.4+dfsg-1ubuntu8) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-service-contracts (2.4.0-1ubuntu2) ...
                                    Removing php-google-recaptcha (1.2.4-3) ...
                                    Removing php-mariadb-mysql-kbs (1.2.12-1) ...
                                    Removing php-nikic-fast-route (1.3.0-3) ...
                                    Removing php-phpmyadmin-shapefile (2.1-5) ...
                                    Removing php-phpseclib (2.0.36-1) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-cache-contracts (2.4.0-1ubuntu2) ...
                                    Removing php-psr-cache (3.0.0-1) ...
                                    Removing php-psr-container (2.0.2-1) ...
                                    Removing php-psr-log (3.0.0-1) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-deprecation-contracts (2.4.0-1ubuntu2) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-polyfill-php80 (1.24.0-1ubuntu2) ...
                                    Removing php-symfony-polyfill-php81 (1.24.0-1ubuntu2) ...
                                    Removing ssl-cert (1.1.2) ...
                                    Removing php-common (2:92ubuntu1) ...
                                    Warning: Stopping phpsessionclean.service, but it can still be activated by:
                                      phpsessionclean.timer
                                    Processing triggers for man-db (2.10.2-1) ...
                                    Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.35-0ubuntu3.8) ...
                                    Scanning processes...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                    Scanning linux images...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                    
                                    Running kernel seems to be up-to-date.
                                    
                                    No services need to be restarted.
                                    
                                    No containers need to be restarted.
                                    
                                    No user sessions are running outdated binaries.
                                    
                                    No VM guests are running outdated hypervisor (qemu) binaries on this host.
                                    

                                    bash /mnt/Linux/install.sh

                                    Detected `Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS' (ubuntu version 22).
                                    
                                    The following changes will be made to this Virtual Machine:
                                      * update arp_notify sysctl.
                                      * packages to be installed/upgraded:
                                        - xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb
                                    
                                    Continue? [y/n] y
                                    
                                    Selecting previously unselected package xe-guest-utilities.
                                    (Reading database ... 134088 files and directories currently installed.)
                                    Preparing to unpack .../xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb ...
                                    Unpacking xe-guest-utilities (7.30.0-12) ...
                                    dpkg: error processing archive /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb (--install):
                                     trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/xenstore', which is also in package xenstore-utils 4.16.0-1~ubuntu2.1
                                    dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
                                    Errors were encountered while processing:
                                     /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_7.30.0-12_amd64.deb
                                    

                                    How can I fix this?

                                    F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • F Offline
                                      fred974 @fred974
                                      last edited by

                                      @fred974 said in Memory reporting incorrect values:

                                      xenstore-utils

                                      apt remove xenstore-utils fix the installation issue.

                                      F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • F Offline
                                        fred974 @fred974
                                        last edited by

                                        Its seem to be reporting correctly now. Thank you all for your help.
                                        a99c1f9b-5741-4d59-aa54-35a3e8dce75f-image.png

                                        85e83354-5e14-4771-a499-a251ee00ae9e-image.png

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                                        • olivierlambertO Offline
                                          olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                          last edited by

                                          Great news 🙂

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