Re: Building computer
On 10/2/2013 5:41 AM, Jeff Bauer wrote:
> On 10/02/2013 04:59 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> On 10/1/2013 5:13 PM, Catherine Gramze wrote:
>>
>>> I have also looked at my memory usage. At this very moment, not running
>>> WoW, I have 5.22 gig being used. 4 gig would not be sufficient for me.
>> You would be correct if the number you're looking at reflected
>> application memory usage. But it doesn't. On any of the modern
>> operating systems one must damn near be a computer scientist to see the
>> actual memory usage. The 5.22GB, this is on Debian, yes? The system
>> monitor? This reports process and cache memory usage. The buffer/cache
>> will literally eat nearly all available memory all the time on Linux,
>> then free some when an application process needs it. I've never used
>> OSX but it's probably similar in its desktop reporting tool.
>>
>> This will really throw you for a loop. Open a shell window and execute
>>
>> ~$ sudo echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>>
>> Wait a few seconds and see what happens to that 5.22GB number. Then
>> report back what you find. You can do this while playing WOW as well.
>> That number will drop like a rock and WOW will keep on going, because
>> the memory you're freeing with that command is cache. And again, Linux
>> will eat nearly all RAM for cache if the system is up long enough.
>>
>
> "free" is another quick way to see where all your RAM went.
Telling her to use free is premature at this point. Especially if
you're not going to instruct her on how to use it. Otherwise it will
only serve to confuse her. Which is precisely why I didn't mention it,
at least not yet.
You've apparently not been following the thread for the past week Jeff.
--
Stan
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