Re: tlug: Caldera Japanese version (more comments)

[Jens-Ulrik Petersen <jens-ulrik.petersen@example.com>]

Mike Fabian <mike.fabian@example.com> writes:

> "Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com> writes:
> 
> > The thing that scares me is that my memory/swap usage never seems to
> > go DOWN when I close apps.... well, a little bit.  but my swap usage
> > almost NEVER goes down by more than 1 or 2 MB.
> 
> I have observed the same phenomenon, my memory/swap usage never seems
> to go down. Currently `free' gives me the output:
> 
> mike@example.com ~$ free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:        127952     123116       4836      33276      17352      22324
> -/+ buffers/cache:      83440      44512
> Swap:       160608      34544     126064
> 
> although I have closed most applications. As far as I remember is has
> always been like this, even with Kernels 2.0.x.

> Therefore I guessed there is nothing wrong with my system, only the
> output of `free' is kind of misleading.

> I would also like to know why `free' and `top' display such strange
> values about memory usage.

I sympathize...

from the Linux FAQ:

---- Start of included text -----------------------8<--- cut here -------------
6.4 Free memory as reported by free keeps shrinking.

The ``free'' figure printed by free doesn't include memory used as a
disk buffer cache--shown in the ``buffers'' column. If you want to
know how much memory is really free add the ``buffers'' amount to
``free''--newer versions of free print an extra line with this info.

The disk buffer cache tends to grow soon after starting Linux up. As
you load more programs and use more files, the contents get cached. It
will stabilize after a while.
---- End of included text -------------------------8<--- and here -------------

ie basically "memory used" as reported by `free` or `cat /proc/meminfo`
is a high water mark.

Jens
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Next Technical Meeting: TBA, January, 2000.  Place: Temple Univ.