On 23 Jan 2003 16:30:56 +0100
Nils-Erik Svangård <nisse@student.luth.se> wrote:
> My system use about 95% of my 512 mb ram, but ps aux and top doesent
> show which process that eats all the memory.
I'm willing to bet without looking at the output of top or free that most
of the RAM usage is by buffers and caches. This is a /good thing/ as RAM is
faster than what those two things are fronting for. The kernel uses up
portion of memory on buffers and caches and automatically subtracts from them
in the event that an programs need more memory. They are in use but for the
purposes of program data and executables they are free.
Here's output from free on my machine:
{grey@teleute:~} free -m -t
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 883 822 61 0 113 419
-/+ buffers/cache: 289 594
Swap: 125 39 86
If you go by just the top line it looks bad. 61Mb free, 822Mb used.
However 419Mb is used in caches and 113Mb in buffers. The second like shows
the totals with those counted as free since, in effect, they are. The second
like shows 289Mb used by programs with 594Mb "free" for program use, though we
know 532Mb of that is used by buffers and caches.
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
To email: Don't despair! | -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
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