linux hogging memory

[Christopher Chan]

Dhananjay Makwana wrote:
> All,
> 
> We have a FC1 system running kernel 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl and kde3
> configured as a backup server. The machine has 384MB ram. 
> 
> We have been observing the total memory usage of the system. If we let
> it run without reboot for days then we see the memory usage (as shown by
> top) keeps increasing steadily. At the end of the week, it barely has
> 8MB of "free" memory, rest all is used up. But "top" does not show who
> is using the rest of 376MB. The total of top 20 program's memory usage
> does not come anywhere close to 376MB. 
> If we reboot the machine then memory usage drops to "acceptable" values
> of around 150MB.
> Below is the output of chkconfig listing. The machine runs at level 5. 
> 
> Any insight from experts would be appreciated. 

1) What does free -m tell you?
2) Is your box swapping? (run 'vmstat 1' and if si and so numbers are 
non zero)
3) The linux 2.4 kernel uses as much memory as it can and usually most 
of that memory is for caches...as free -m will tell you, you do not have 
to worry since cache memory is reduced immediately when programs need 
memory.