where's my memory?

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Steven P. Ulrick wrote:
> Hello Everyone
> Since the topic has been started, here is what I am sure is a grade school 
> level memory question:
> My system has an Intel Xeon 2GHZ QuadCore processor with 8 gigabytes of RAM.  
> Right now, "top" says the following:
> Mem:	8108356k total,	7971312k used,	137176k free,		517972k 	buffers
> Swap:	1507320k total,	2244k used,		1505076k free,	6308168k cached
> 
> To me, that looks like almost all of my memory is being used.  This is on a 
> system which is relatively idle right now.
> 
> "ksysguard" says that about 1.1 GiB of 7.7 GiB is being used.
> "gnome-system-monitor" says the same thing "ksysguard" says.
> Actually, "gnome-system-monitor" says one thing different: that my system is 
> using 2.2 MiB of Swap...
> 
> So I guess I am wondering what does "top" mean when it says that almost all of 
> my memory is BEING used at the same time that the KDE and GNOME system 
> monitoring tools say that only about 1.1 GiB is being used?
> 
> Steven P. Ulrick 
> 
You have to look at what kind of memory usage is being reported. As
has been discussed many times on this list, Linux likes to use all
of your memory. What is not being used by programs, is used for
buffers and cache. It leaves a small reserve for quick  allocation,
and will free buffers and cache as needed. This results in a faster
system. After all, unused memory is wasted memory.

You may want to run the free command, and look at how it displays
memory usage. I find the difference between the first and second
line helpful in understanding how memory is being used.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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