Cached memory

[Gilboa Davara]

On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 07:40 -0800, Tom Spec wrote:
> Is there a kernel parameter or something I can tune to limit the
> amount of memory that will be used for cache (i.e. 144 in this
> example)?  Let's say I never wanted that to go past 64.
> 
> free -m
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers
> cached
> Mem:           503        399        104          0         67
> 144
> -/+ buffers/cache:        187        315
> Swap:          511          0        511
> 
I assume that you understand that memory is being used for cache - as long it's not needed elsewhere, right?
As for your question, you can manually clear the cache by issuing the following command: (as root)

$ echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

- Gilboa