Memory use

[fred smith]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 09:35:10PM +0200, thedogfarted wrote:
> does it uses swap space for accelerating everything too?? because now it 
> has "eaten" all avilable memory and starts to "eat" swap space. Until 

The kernel will use up nearly all physical memory. Any that is not used
by programs being run will be used for buffering and caching various
stuff in RAM so it can be accessed more quickly than if it had to be
retrieved from disk. As time goes by, the kernel will also discover
programs or portions of programs that are sitting in memory and not
being used, and those things will be moved into swap to free up more
memory, which will also be used for buffers and caching. 

This gets the important stuff, the stuff that's being used, into memory
to the extent possible, and everything else (stuff that's not being used)
into swap.

When a demand for more memory occurs the buffers can be written to disk
and/or cached stuff can be discarded to free up memory for the new need.

This makes for efficient use of memory, i.e., use as much as possible for
things that benefit from quick access.

> this i've never seen anything in my swap partition, now there are 44M.
> 
> just wondering if there is a way to see how much each program uses memory
> 
> WipeOut wrote:
> >thedogfarted wrote:
> >
> >>After reboot system monitor shows i have more that 50% memory free, 
> >>but the amount of memory used is slowly rising and now it's 4h after 
> >>reboot and i have 100% memory used :(
> >>
> >>Probably this is caused by some apps i use (possible candidates are 
> >>xmms and xchat), is there some way to check it?
> >>
> >>I wonder if someone else have such issues.
> >>
> >>
> >Yes, everyone will have this issue.. If their system is working properly 
> >anyway.. :)
> >
> >As has been said many times before, linux makes use of all availible 
> >memory for caching which makes things run faster..
> >
> >Later..
> >
> >
> 
> 
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-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
                    The Lord detests the way of the wicked 
                  but he loves those who pursue righteousness.
----------------------------- Proverbs 15:9 (niv) -----------------------------
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