[vox-tech] can YOU be certified?!?

[ME]

On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> is anyone brave enough to try to answer this question in public?

Sure. Why not?

> =======================================================================
> Based on observation and the output from the top command, which of the
> following pieces of information tells you that swap space needs to be
> increased?
> 
> a) The amount of available memory nearly equals the amount of used
>    memory.

If "available" is not "total" but is instead "free", then we may not even
be into swap.

Not sufficient information to go with this. Shared memory and buffer/cache
space play an important role here. Used can be close to equal that of
total, but iif we have heavy use of buffers/cache and take into
consideration shared, then are we really "short" on memory?

(Say you have 2 GB of RAM. You can preload most src files for the kernel
into buffer space, and watch your kernel compile really fast. - Have not
tested this, was lurking in a discussion on this. When buffer/cache space 
is loaded with files, that "space" can be freed really easily.)

> b) The amount of available swap space nearly equals the amount of RAM.

This is PROBABLY what they will say. Many common places suggest doubling
the amount of RAM to compute starting swap space. This may be a "good
rule" for home desktop machines and older systems, but I find this is
often not the best idea for machines with huge amounts of RAM.

They are probably targetting hme user and not server class machines if
this is their "right answer." I dont like it though.

> c) You hear constant noise from your hard drive.

Out of scope from original premise. Hard disk chatter is not from
"top". Also, hard disk noise may offer a false positive with file access
or a find command producing similar results.

> d) The CPU utilization level is near 100%

I dont see this as a likely answer. Their "right answer" will probably be
"b" even though none of them are to my liking. :-/

-ME

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