mysqld using 60-80% of memory on idle [closed]

Question

mysqld using 60-80% of memory (1gb total) and it is not even running any queries. When it runs an expensive query CPU + Memory go up a lot, but even when is idle, it is still using 60% of the memory.

Is this normal?

I am using Cent OS 6 and mysql 5.

Here is my my.cnf file:

# The MySQL database server configuration file.
#
# You can copy this to one of:
# - "/etc/mysql/my.cnf" to set global options,
# - "~/.my.cnf" to set user-specific options.
# 
# One can use all long options that the program supports.
# Run program with --help to get a list of available options and with
# --print-defaults to see which it would actually understand and use.
#
# For explanations see
# http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/server-system-variables.html
#
# Take care to only add/remove/change a setting if you are comfortable
# doing so! For Rackspace customers, if you have any questions or
# concerns, please contact the MySQL Database Services Team. Be aware
# that some work performed by this team can involve additional billable
# fees.
#
# This file generated for host php-pos-db please modify
# variables if the server is resized from 1016636kB

[mysqld]

### General
user                = mysql
port                = 3306
datadir                         = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir                          = /tmp
socket                          = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
skip-external-locking           = 1
log_error                       = /var/log/mysqld.log

## This prevents using host-based authentication. That means users must be
## created using an ip-address (ie 'myuser'@'192.168.100.1') or must make
## use of the % wildcard (ie 'myuser'@'%'). The benefit to not using
## host-based authentication is that DNS will not impact MySQL performance.
#skip-name-resolve

## If open-files-limit is set very low, MySQL may increase on its own. Either
## way, increase this if MySQL gives 'too many open files' errors. Setting
## this above 65535 could be unwise (MySQL may crash).
open-files-limit                = 20000

### Cache
thread-cache-size               = 16
table-open-cache                = 2048
table-definition-cache          = 512

## Generally, it is unwise to set the query cache to be larger than 64-128M 
## as the costs associated with maintaining the cache outweigh the performance
## gains. A far superior solution would be to implement memcached, though this
## required modifying the application, among other things.
query-cache-type                = 1
query-cache-size                = 32M
query-cache-limit               = 1M

### Per-thread Buffers
sort-buffer-size                = 1M
read-buffer-size                = 1M
read-rnd-buffer-size            = 8M
join-buffer-size                = 1M

### Temp Tables
tmp-table-size                  = 64M 
max-heap-table-size             = 64M

### Networking
back-log                        = 100
max-connections                 = 75
max-connect-errors              = 10000
max-allowed-packet              = 16M
interactive-timeout             = 600
wait-timeout                    = 180
net_read_timeout        = 30
net_write_timeout       = 30
# This value is the size of the listen queue for incoming TCP/IP connections.
back_log            = 128

#### Storage Engines
## Set this to force MySQL to use a particular engine / table-type
## for new tables. This setting can still be overridden by specifying
## the engine explicitly in the CREATE TABLE statement.
default-storage-engine         = InnoDB

## Makes sure MySQL does not start if InnoDB fails to start. This helps
## prevent ugly silent failures.
innodb                          = FORCE

### MyISAM
## Not sure what to set this to?
## Try running a 'du -sch /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI'
## This will give you a good estimate on the size of all the MyISAM indexes.
## (The buffer may not need to set that high, however)
key-buffer-size                 = 248M
## This setting controls the size of the buffer that is allocated when 
## sorting MyISAM indexes during a REPAIR TABLE or when creating indexes 
## with CREATE INDEX or ALTER TABLE.
myisam-sort-buffer-size         = 128M

### InnoDB
## Note: While most settings in MySQL can be set at run-time, many InnoDB
## variables cannot be set at runtime as require restarting MySQL
###
## These settings control how much RAM InnoDB will use. Generally, when using
## mostly InnoDB tables, the innodb-buffer-pool-size should be as large as
## is possible without swapping or starving other processes of RAM. The other 
## two settings usually do not need to be changed, but can help for very large 
## datasets.
innodb-buffer-pool-size         = 595M
innodb-log-buffer-size          = 8M

## Be careful when changing these as they require re-generating the 
## ib-logfile* files, which must be done carefully. Do not change this unless 
## you are familiar with the procedure.
innodb-log-file-size           = 128M
innodb-log-files-in-group      = 2

## This will cause each table to create its own .ibd file
innodb-file-per-table           = 1

## Setting this to 2 will decrease disk I/O but can cause up to a second of
## queries to be lost during a hard outage (i.e. power failures)
# innodb-flush-log-at-trx-commit = 2

### Replication
## Set this to the Server's instance ID in replication environments
server-id                       = 1

#log-bin                        = /var/lib/mysql/bin-log
#relay-log                      = /var/lib/mysql/relay-log
#relay-log-space-limit          = 4G
#expire-logs-days               = 5

## This should be enabled on conventional MySQL slaves
#read-only                      = 1

## This will cause replicated statements on a slave to be written to the slave's binlog
## Enable this on the middle slave of M->S->S configs
#log-slave-updates              = 1

#binlog-format                  = STATEMENT

### Logging
## This option determines the destination for general query log and slow query log output.
## The option value can be given as one or more of the words TABLE, FILE, or NONE.
## NOTE: Table logging takes away 50% of performance and thus is not recommended
##       http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=30414
## In addition, you cannot backup the contents of these tables properly
## (mysqldump skips these tables by default since they cannot be locked)
#log-output                     = FILE
slow-query-log                 = 1
slow-query-log-file            = /var/lib/mysql/slow-log
long-query-time                = 2
#log-queries-not-using-indexes  = 0

[mysqld-safe]
log-error                       = /var/log/mysqld.log

[mysqldump]
max-allowed-packet      = 16M

# * IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file!
#   The files must end with '.cnf', otherwise they'll be ignored.
#
!includedir /etc/sysconfig/mysqld-config/

Answer 1

What you are seeing is normal, even "good" and "right," assuming most of your tables are InnoDB.

This line...

innodb-buffer-pool-size         = 595M

... is causing mysqld to request 595MB of RAM from the system when it initially starts, and hold on to that memory for as long as it is running. This is the InnoDB Buffer Pool:

InnoDB maintains a storage area called the buffer pool for caching data and indexes in memory. Knowing how the InnoDB buffer pool works, and taking advantage of it to keep frequently accessed data in memory, is an important aspect of MySQL tuning.

Ideally, you set the size of the buffer pool to as large a value as practical, leaving enough memory for other processes on the server to run without excessive paging. The larger the buffer pool, the more InnoDB acts like an in-memory database, reading data from disk once and then accessing the data from memory during subsequent reads. The buffer pool even caches data changed by insert and update operations, so that disk writes can be grouped together for better performance.

Of course, it doesn't make sense once you've cached data to evict it unless you need to make room for different data, so this pool of memory is never freed. But it also doesn't grow. Other things may request more memory from the system, but this is usually the big one.

At any rate, though, this allocation of memory isn't related to how much work MySQL is doing at the moment.

You'll see this point during startup where this is allocated in your MySQL error log. Something like this:

121121 23:01:46 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 595M

If your server is only running MySQL, what you have is probably a very appropriate size. If you're also running a web server or other things on the same machine, then you probably need to scale it back -- but this pool of memory is vital for performance -- so you want it to be as large as practical without causing your system to start swapping. If you're swapping, you're undoing the massive advantage the pool provides.

In Linux, if you're running a web server or other things on the same machine as MySQL, you need to be much more careful and set this to a much lower value because bad, tricky-to-diagnose, things happen when you run out of memory. That's true in other environments, but the manifestations can be different.

Interesting stats about the usage of the pool can be obtained with this:

mysql> show status like 'innodb_buffer_pool%';