New to Virtualmin/CentOs - How to Lower Ram Demand?

Virtualmin
1

Hello All,

I am a PHP Developer by profession and have decided to go back to my routes and instead of paying for hosting for a PHP Development server, Id just host my own… Then put the Beta’s live that way also. I installed CentOS 5 and VirtualMin without any problems which is a testament to Webmin as my experience with servers go as far as Print/Storage servers and WHM/cPanel and have only “played” with CentOs.

On System Information it says:
Real Memory 495.43 MB total, 298.22 MB Used

Can you suggest any ways I can lower the demand on RAM? …
I had a few ideas such as disabling Mail/spam/virus and disabling Reporting/stats as these are not required.
I use GMail for email and will only host own websites here (until/if I feel confident to host again under virtualmin)
How one I go about disabling those?

As VirtualMin is web based CP, is it possible for me to boot CentOS 5 in terminal (without disabling VirtualMin) so im not starting GNOME on boot?

Any other suggestions to lower RAM usage, but keep server functionality would be appreciated. I have ripped all unused hardware out, and will invest in more RAM (but more likely a proper server creating cluster in near future).

Regards, Adam

2

Virtualmin and Webmin have nothing to do with Gnome or X. You should definitely not be running X on a server.

To disable X, boot into runlevel 3.

Edit /etc/inittab and look for the line “id:5:initdefault”

Change it to 3

3

There’s also a guide called “Virtualmin on Low Memory Systems” in the legacy docs index (will be migrated to the new categorization soon). I’m on my phone in the airport so can’t easily link you to it…but the legacy index is at http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/legacy

4

Thank you Joe, I am reading it now. Thank you for letting me know how to boot up without GNOME, I can presume that will help a lot.
(“to disable x” not sure what X is)

5

the desktop (gnome, kde) runs on X, aka Xorg, aka Xserver sort of.

6

That made sense, I have managed to boot without K.

I have followed instructions on the link provided by Joe and it has gone down well but the instructions are not their for how to Enable SWAP?

I tried to figure out how to do it myself
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/centos5/centos5_administration_guide/centos5_s1-swap-adding.html

Just to double check, I should run commands in points 5.2.2 and then 5.2.3 ? …
5.2.1 is about extending and I dont think (unless by deafult) swat is enabled therefore does not need extending.

Regards, Adam

7

swap or virtual memory is enabled by default when you install the OS. You should see that on virtualmins information page. It is usually 2x the available RAM. If you have enough RAM the system won’t have to use it.

you can change the settings of it if needed as it explains in that website.