High memory utilization

dav7500 · 03-02-2004, 10:41 AM

Hi everyone. Looking for some help on a puzzling problem here.
I just setup RH9 on a P4-2Ghz machine with 256 MB RAM.
After installing all packages, updating kernel, installing apt-get & red-carpet, I see my memory utilization is always above 95% even when I'm not running anything (including right after reboot).

It's obviously slowing down my performance in running anything like mozilla browser or even terminal window.

This can't be normal. Any ideas?

aaa · 03-02-2004, 11:12 AM

Make sure extra services you don't need aren't running. Red Hat probably has a tool for this.

dav7500 · 03-02-2004, 11:18 AM

Considering I installed all packages, I figured some extraneous stuff is running but then I thought it would've only installed itself - not enabled it.

Any listing of 'extraneous services' that I can safely disable?

dav7500 · 03-04-2004, 02:55 PM

I went through the list of services. Removed a few. There weren't that many running to begin with.

I checked someone else's RH9 setup and they also had their RAM util above 95% all the time.

I guess it's normal behaviour?

Joey.Dale · 03-04-2004, 09:05 PM

Linux uses memory differtly that windows. Linux will use all it can before writing to swap. I have 3/4 of a GB in my linux box and: root@linux:~# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 766556 755876 10680 0 113824 346260
-/+ buffers/cache: 295792 470764
Swap: 199072 0 199072

almost all is used

-Joey

chrisfirestar · 03-05-2004, 02:36 AM

if i understand it all i think that the way linux will work is that to save resources clearing memory etc it will wait until it is needed.. so it will build up then when its needed it will drop some... not the most technically sounds desciption but gets the point across

dav7500 · 03-05-2004, 08:23 AM

That confirms my hunch. Thanks guys.

OdieQ · 03-05-2004, 05:07 PM

If you want to check how much memory is actually used by applications, look at the second row of the 'free' command output.

/Odie