[rhn-users] Question on memory usage

[Rigoberto Corujo]

Hello,

I have two machines which have the same amount of
total memory.  When the machines are booted, the
amount of free memory is the same as shown by
"/proc/meminfo".  After a period of time, the amount
of free memory differs betweem the two machines even
though, at the time I'm taking a reading of
"/proc/meminfo", both machines are not running
anything other than the same minimal set of processes.
 That is, no user apps.  Just the bare bones system
processes.

Here's an example of two machines, n5 and n11, and
their "/proc/meminfo" values.  Can someone explain why
this situation would occur and is there any why to
tell Linux to reclaim any memory that's not actually
being used?

[root at n5 ~]# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      4037388 kB
MemFree:       3814020 kB
Buffers:         24868 kB
Cached:          61404 kB
SwapCached:      60064 kB
Active:          34188 kB
Inactive:       119224 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:      4037388 kB
LowFree:       3814020 kB
SwapTotal:     6289408 kB
SwapFree:      6228780 kB
Dirty:               0 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:          24776 kB
Slab:            37776 kB
Committed_AS:    50692 kB
PageTables:       1232 kB
VmallocTotal: 536870911 kB
VmallocUsed:     15788 kB
VmallocChunk: 536855115 kB
HugePages_Total:     0
HugePages_Free:      0
Hugepagesize:     2048 kB


[root at n11 ~]# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      4037388 kB
MemFree:       2521308 kB
Buffers:         17676 kB
Cached:          27108 kB
SwapCached:    1392056 kB
Active:          39660 kB
Inactive:      1403784 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:      4037388 kB
LowFree:       2521308 kB
SwapTotal:     6289408 kB
SwapFree:      4896448 kB
Dirty:               0 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:          24324 kB
Slab:            40444 kB
Committed_AS:    50832 kB
PageTables:       1232 kB
VmallocTotal: 536870911 kB
VmallocUsed:     15788 kB
VmallocChunk: 536855115 kB
HugePages_Total:     0
HugePages_Free:      0
Hugepagesize:     2048 kB

Thank you.

Rigoberto


 
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