Hi everyone I was using Centos 5.6 and ran into serious memory problems where it would go so low a freeze on me I had to actually set cron to run every 20 minutes using
" sync ; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches " so I could manage to pull all of my wanted data for a reinstall. so after lots of testing went to 5.5 and now I still have the same issue with default install. No website components are setup yet.
I know about http://www.linuxatemyram.com/ but something just doesnt feel right about this.
I already ran memtest with 12 passes and 0 errors replaced power supply I checked processor for damage and it still looks new. no swelling on mobo eaither "used magnify glass" to inspect.
only this I have done was setup ssh and made ntfs files compatable for external HD copying
here are the server statistics:

Asus mobo - M4A785TD-M EVO
AMD Quadcore 2.8 GHZ athlon processor
8 gigs ddr3 ram dual channel 1333
raid stripping "hardware"
2x 1tb HD 7200 rpm
Here is memory:

[root@Bustin-Linux ~]# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7727 7684 42 0 2305 4938
-/+ buffers/cache: 441 7285
Swap: 9727 0 9727

Using top:

top - 12:43:03 up 19:04, 4 users, load average: 2.87, 2.79, 2.78
Tasks: 149 total, 1 running, 148 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.2%us, 2.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 66.8%id, 29.1%wa, 1.2%hi, 0.6%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 7912636k total, 7867840k used, 44796k free, 2375000k buffers
Swap: 9961464k total, 180k used, 9961284k free, 5041072k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
19070 root 18 0 84388 20m 700 D 2.0 0.3 37:52.85 mount.ntfs-3g
18968 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 2.0 0.0 8:40.66 usb-storage
12 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 6:04.37 ksoftirqd/3
587 root 10 -5 0 0

PLEASE HELP!!

I think we need a better description of that "freeze" part.

That is so unlikely to be constructive, I have to conclude you are confused in your belief that any "freeze" was related to your memory situation.

Whether or not it "feels" right, it is right.

That shows very little memory load. Almost all your memory is buffers and cache, which are effectively free.

A real "freeze" would indicate a real problem. But nothing you showed so far about memory use indicates a real problem. I doubt you really had a "freeze". But if you did, you need to focus more on that and less on blaming it on memory use statistics you don't understand.

I'm sorry i should have said now that im on 5.5 I dont have a freeze issue now but I noticed that the memory was very high for being almost default setup but was thinking it wasnt normal cause it is using 2GB for buffering. I am afraid that once I setup apache and nginx ect... that I will run into these problems again. When I ran mencoder for conversions the memory was like this and the server would restart during this process.

so what I really wanted to know is if this look normal to someone more knowledgeable then myself.

Thanks

I'm not 100% clear myself on what "buffers" are in Linux memory statistics. I have a better understanding of "cached".

It is a little unusual that your "buffers" are so high relative to cached. But I still don't think it is anything to be concerned about. If the difference between "buffers" and "cached" had more consequence for ordinary users, I think there would be more discussion of that difference.

That kind of correlation does not imply causation.

Looks normal to me.