[c-nsp] Free memory with 12.2(25)S

[Bernhard Schmidt]

Hi everyone,

I've just (for testing, want to play with IPv6 Multicast) upgraded one
of our access routers from 12.2(18)S4 to 12.2(25)S. Besides an almost
expected problem (broken encrypted password for an IPv6 BGP peer-group)
it was pretty flawless, so I took a look into my statistics and almost
died, because free memory was down to 13MB. The box has 160MB (NPE-300)
and had 70MB free before the upgrade.

I'm using cricket for graphing (with genRtrConfig for config generation,
which btw cannot cope with the new format of sysDescr, but that is no
showstopper) that queries the SNMP OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.48.1.1.1.6.1 for
free memory.

SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.9.9.48.1.1.1.6.1 = Gauge32: 13324148

           [...]  Total(b)   Used(b)   Free(b)  Lowest(b)  Largest(b)
Processor         80847772  20261464  60586308  13136996   47293344

so this OID is apparently monitoring the Lowest value. Looking at the
entire 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.48.1.1.1 tree there are Used, Lowest and Largest,
but no Free. 

I tried to check this with my other boxes, on all of them Free is almost
equal to Lowest (first big difference, why?). Checking the SNMP values again 
the 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.48.1.1.1 tree shows Used, Free and Largest, with
1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.48.1.1.1.6.1 being Free as expected.

Is this a bug in 12.2(25)S where the wrong column is returned or have
there been some changes in the software structure that Lowest should be
monitored now instead of Free?

Thanks in advance
Bernhard

FTR:
Cisco IOS Software, 7200 Software (C7200-P-M), Version 12.2(25)S,
RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc2)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2004 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Fri 13-Aug-04 18:42 by cmong
[...]
Cisco 7206VXR (NPE300) processor (revision D) with 122880K/40960K bytes
of memory.
Processor board ID xxxxxxx
R7000 CPU at 262Mhz, Implementation 39, Rev 2.1, 256KB L2 Cache
6 slot VXR midplane, Version 2.0