[BozemanLUG] Memory, spam and the march of progress

[David Eder]

I've been running apache, mysql, postfix, named, and a full desktop for
several years now without very many bumps, but I think I'm hitting a
memory bump now.  I seem to be using 800+MB of swap.  I'm used to only
seeing a few hundred K.  Needless to say, the system is too slow when
running out of swap this much.

Many will remember my rants at the meetings about KDE4 memory leaks. While
the memory leaks are real (every changelog seems to include plugging these
as a major feature), I do not believe that it is my real issue.

I think software is just fatter in general and I've hit the limit of what
I can do on a single box with 2GB ram.

I'm looking for ways to trim the fat without loosing anything or having to
buy anything.

I've move to XFCE, dropped amavisd, spamassassin and clamav in postfix,
reduced the spare servers for apache (might go back to lighttpd).  I may
run without flash in Opera.  It seems to take hundreds of MB for no
apparent reason.

Any advice on further trimming, spam reduction, etc would be appreciated.

I don't mind if you tell me I'm nuts or explain to me that I'm chasing my
tail.

David.