Memory Consumption

fred smith fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us
Sun Feb 1 23:47:26 UTC 2004


On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 07:51:46PM +0100, Julien Tane wrote:
> Hello Fred,
> 
> thanks a lot. I had been wondering in the last days.  I mean this is O.K 
> now... But Can it be that some useless things are cached or buffered.
> 
> Is there a way to find out what  is buffered or cached ( or perhaps tell 
> which application buffer and cache so much ?).

It's not an app that buffers or caches stuff, it's the Linux kernel.
it recognizes that certain things are being used multiple times and
stores them in otherwise unused memory for convenient future access.
It'll discard cached stuff or write to disk bufferd stuff whenever
it needs to, should it need to free up memory in the future.

You don't need to worry about this large amount of buffer/cache causing
you to run out of memory,... it won't, as per above.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Julien
> 
> fred smith wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 07:19:13PM +0100, Julien Tane wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >>Can anyone tell me what in my computer  takes so much RAM?
> >>           total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> >>Mem:        514592     390860     123732          0      23684     215796
> >>-/+ buffers/cache:     151380     363212                ^^^^^^     ^^^^^^
> >>Swap:      1020088          0    1020088
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >You asked:
> >
> > 
> >
> >>So where are the 200M  missing memory ?
> >>
> >>Can you give me a hint?
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >Yes, look at the "cached" and "buffers" lines in your posting above.
> >Those two total to  around 235-240 megabytes.
> >
> >This is NORMAL. Linux does this ON PURPOSE. you've got all that RAM sitting
> >there that would otherwise be DOING NOTHING, so the kernel puts it to use
> >providing perfomance-enhancing buffering and caching. These things can be
> >quickly freed if necessary, in case some program suddenly demands 
> >additional
> >RAM, so it's not like it's a problem.
> > 
> >
> 
> 
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-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
   "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged 
   sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; 
              it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."  
---------------------------- Hebrews 4:12 (niv) ------------------------------
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