'
Tasks: TOP => posts:rebake
(See full trace by running task with --trace)
root@Unicyclist-app:/var/www/discourse#
```
Here’s the output of `free -h` during the rebake (the values are roughly the same at any time during the rebake):
```plaintext
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.6Gi 4.6Gi 231Mi 2.1Gi 2.8Gi 709Mi
Swap: 2.0Gi 1.8Gi 194Mi
```
I also have a lot of free space (I didn’t the first times, but freed space just in case, and it didn’t change anything).
I have rebaked all posts on this forum a few times over the last years and I never faced any issues. The forum hasn’t grown much, the server’s specs are the same as before.
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [3 december 2025 om 16:28 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/2 "2025-12-03T16:28:13Z")
I’m still looking for help on this 😛
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [13 december 2025 om 22:25 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/3 "2025-12-13T22:25:07Z")
I increased the swap size from 2 to 4 GB, and the rebake worked.
So, I guess it was about memory, though I am a bit surprised by how much it asks (8 GB RAM + 4 GB swap), especially since older rebakes didn’t have any issues with no swap and the same amount of RAM.
What should I do if I want to monitor RAM usage and check for any issues? What metric should matter to estimate the memory requirements? Page views per day (5000-8000 + bot spikes once or twice a month)? Database size (23 GB)? 🤷 🤨
---
### Author:  [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S)
#### Post date: [14 december 2025 om 13:35 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/4 "2025-12-14T13:35:13Z")
Memory usage is much greater during a rebuild than during normal operation. It seems that rebaking, similarly, makes a great demand. If so, any kind of regular monitoring wouldn’t add much value: the monitoring would be needed during those peaks, which fortunately happen when the admin takes some specific action.
When I was running on smaller, more marginal machine configuration, I would have a second terminal window open, ssh’d into my server and running
`vmstat 5`
which gives a record of memory usage as it ebbs and flows. Watch the swpd column and compare against your configured swap space. Commonly the failure will happen suddenly, not gradually, so even looking at short term trends is not much help.
If you have the disk space, there’s no harm at all in having lots of swap - half as much as RAM, or even as much as RAM. It’s there in this case to cope with peaks. You don’t want to see swapping/paging activity during normal use. Again, one can use `vmstat 5 5` to get a short-term picture of paging activity (in the si and so columns)
Here’s an example:
```plaintext
# vmstat 5 5
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
3 0 1392140 61200 11632 76432 41 32 117 93 0 1 2 1 97 0 0
1 1 1467220 63416 324 67284 8786 20499 13178 20567 2539 8924 77 13 0 10 0
0 2 1593340 57916 1096 53832 24262 46868 29986 46889 5377 18534 44 22 0 34 0
4 0 1155632 120680 2772 86280 39111 35424 54768 37824 6987 25174 38 27 0 35 0
3 0 1102988 74096 2852 85276 11261 246 12610 271 1879 6365 86 6 0 8 0
```
You see that that swpd column peaked at over 1.5G, versus my 2.0G configured. You see that swapout (so) activity peaked in the same 5 second window, and swapin (si) peaked in the next window.
(Edit: I can see I had 2.0G swap configured because I’d previous run `free`:
```plaintext
# free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1009140 696504 78544 51784 234092 118436
Swap: 2097144 154628 1942516
```
we also see I was at the time managing to run discourse with only 1G RAM.)
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [14 december 2025 om 14:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/5 "2025-12-14T14:21:15Z")
> [@Ed\_S](#):
>
> If you have the disk space, there’s no harm at all in having lots of swap - half as much as RAM, or even as much as RAM
Interesting. I’ve been short on disk space for a while. I’m currently trying to rescale to other plans (I’ll create a topic about it) and see how performances compare, but instead of doing this, you think it would be a better idea – on the paper, at least – to keep my plan, move my backups to a cheap additional volume\[1\], and add several GB of swap?
* * *
1. Well I need to see if there’s that much difference between adding a volume or changing my plan to another one that also offers more disk space)
---
### Author:  [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S)
#### Post date: [14 december 2025 om 14:39 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/6 "2025-12-14T14:39:23Z")
That’s a possible tradeoff. One of the first things I did was limit the number (and adjust the frequency) of backups. I haven’t yet moved to block storage for backups, or uploads, but that might be a win, if it extends the useful life of a limited-RAM configuration.
(Another thing I did, towards the end of my tenure in the smallest config machines, was to temporarily rescale to a larger RAM instance just for the time it takes to do an upgrade, and then rescale back. It only cost pennies, even though the larger instance might be twice the monthly cost. But it does take a little downtime, and a little time and care. And it requires that your provider has a larger machine with the same disk capacity - upscaling to a config with larger disk is usually a one-way street.)
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [14 december 2025 om 14:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/7 "2025-12-14T14:51:28Z")
> [@Ed\_S](#):
>
> And it requires that your provider has a larger machine with the same disk capacity
My providers allows upscaling while keeping the same disk space, which allows unscaling if needed 🙂
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [13 januari 2026 om 14:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebake-failing-how-to-diagnose-and-fix/389064/8 "2026-01-13T14:52:14Z")
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