[linux-help] Re: Consumption of free memory

[John Reinke <jmreinke@xxxxxxxxx>]

John,
Is you computer having problems? You didn't mention any. If you are
concerned about a stray process, you would probably want to study the
output of the 'top' or 'ps' commands.

If it is only a matter of lots of memory being "used", you've noticed a
*feature* of Linux, not a bug. Doesn't it seem wastful to buy a lot of RAM,
but it only gets used when you load a lot of apps at the same time? The
Linux kernel sees that you have unused memory, and it uses it as additional
cache or buffers to increase performance. Whenever more memory is needed
for applications, it is still available. Since RAM performance is
significantly better than swap performance, it is just plain smarter to use
the RAM if is is available. You'll notice in the 'free' output below that
while it was using a lot of the memory (maybe 60% of the total RAM), swap
was untouched.

(Remember, there is a reason you are using Linux instead of Windoze.)

John

>I am running Redhat 7.1 and I am having a problem I've not had before.
>If I leave the system running, I gradually run out of free memory. I
>can't determine the process that is causing it but everything points to
>the os. This is an output of the free command:
>
>
>             total       used       free     shared    buffers
>cached
>Mem:        384424     206616     177808          0      11684
>136636
>-/+ buffers/cache:      58296     326128
>Swap:       393552          0     393552
>
>if I don't shut it down regularly, the buffers and cached memory
>continue to grow. Any ideas as to where to start would be appreciated. I
>don't think its a cron job because I have the default settings from
>Redhat but I don't know. Thanks ahead of schedule.
>
>-John


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