On Oct 25, 2003, at 10:35 PM, Benjamin Bostow wrote:
> I have a system running RH 7.3. I have recently been concerned about my
> server running out of memory. I added 1GB of memory to my server to
> see if
> by chance 256 isn't enough. When I first boot up my server the free
> memory
> is 185324. A run of free a day later gives me the following output:
>
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 1289408 661136 628272 0 13624
> 515040
> -/+ buffers/cache: 132472 1156936
> Swap: 2359208 792 2358416
>
> I tried stopping every process individually to find what is taking all
> of
> the memory. The most I went down was around 10K. Is there any programs
> that
> will tell me all segments of memory and what program is in it. I have
> tried
> using top but it only shows me 15 or so pids. Also what is the cached
> that
> free shows. If this is a kernel thing is there a place where I can
> place
> what the maximum cache should be or how to clear it.
I'm no Linux expert but it looks like Linux has come around to the BSD
'free memory is wasted' philosophy. This is a good thing. The OS might
as well use available memory for something, even if it is just caching
the hard disk. Under BSD style system one never has any free memory
except after a boot. It's just not a problem.
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