(no subject)

[Mark Neidorff]

On Wed, 5 May 2004, Yang Xiao wrote:

> Hi list,
> 
> I'm running Fedora Core 1 with 512 MB RAM and 1 Ghz CPU. 
> 
> I noticed that even without any apps running, the machine seems to be using
> a lot of RAM and I can't figure out what and why.
> 
> Here's the top output
> 
>            total    0.0%    0.0%    0.0%   0.0%     0.0%    0.0%  100.0%
> Mem:   513292k av,  352408k used,  160884k free,       0k shrd,  106080k
> buff
>        139380k active,              83000k inactive
> Swap: 1044216k av,     496k used, 1043720k free                  112940k
> cached
[snip]
> 
> 
> I suppose cached/buffered memory are "free" because free gives the following
> output
> 
>             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:           501        344        157          0        103        110
> -/+ buffers/cache:        130        371
> Swap:         1019          0       1019
> 
> but still, what's using 130 MB of RAM ?

The 130 is buffers.  Linux manages memory as needed so the amount used 
may appear large, but it just hasn't been freed yet (because there is no 
need to).  All of that is a simplification, but it gives you the idea.

Mark  

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