Memory Issue

[Brian Cluff]

I've always heard it said, with linux, free ram is wasted ram.

> Which number in the above ``free'' report are you looking at?  If
> you're looking at the "Mem:" line, this line reports the amount of
> memory used by both applications and the (file) buffer cache.  The
> line you should be looking at to determine how much memory is being
> used by your applications is the second line: "-/+ buffers/cache".
> In your free report, above, you have only 45MB being used by your
> applications, with 206MB free.
>
> If you're looking at the top line for your free numbers, you'll
> see this bounce around quite a bit.  If you start a short-lived,
> memory hungry application, it'll "steal" some memory from the
> buffer/cached pool and then release it when it is done.  The
> kernel won't immediately reuse it for file caching, so you'll
> have some truly free memory for a while.
>
> I don't think that there is any cause for concern on your part.  The
> Linux kernel is merely attempting to make the most of the resources
> that you have on your machine.  In fact, throwing more memory in the
> machine is almost always beneficial even if you do not expect your
> applications to directly use it.  The reason is that the kernel can
> use it for caching files (think of it as a smart RAM disk w/ backing
> store) which will both improve performance as well as limit wear and
> tear on your hard drives.
>
> Kevin
>
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