I have web server that is a 850Mhz celeron (i didnt need anything powerful) with 256mb of RAM, a 40gb hdd and a 160gb hdd. When I boot the computer up from a cold start and i log in using ssh and do a cat /proc/meminfo, it says that the computer has 128mb of free ram but then after about a day it will drop down to 4mb of available memory. What could be eating up the available ram? Would apache be doing it? here is a log of dmesg and ps aux.

dmesg log

ps aux log


Is there anything i could get rid of to speed up the server and free up some ram?

look into top and free and ps -ef|more.....that will tell you what is using what memory.

Specifically, in top look at the +/- buffers "free" column...that will tell you how much ram is actually availible.

top and free are both telling me that i have 4200kb of free memory out of 256712kb

i only have 8MB free.




how much swap is used? if none or small amountt, you are okay. linux uses memory differently than windows. nothing to worry about.

Use this command:

The numbers you should care about is "-/+ buffers/cache"

It's normal that things get cached.

Unused RAM is wasted RAM, and that's how GNU/Linux thinks too.

but using up a lot of ram slows the machine down greatly doesnt it?

i just checked...none of my swap is being used..so i guess everything is ok right?

the entire memory sub system in Linux is virual as in it's not actually using all that physical RAM
you are thinking about RAM like you are using that other legacy 1983 system.

we hear this so much i think they need to do away with proc and sys memory reporting altogether

i must be thinking about how windows works...and how much windows sucks at memory usage.

Im not a newbie with linux but i'm by far not an expert...i never understood how linux utilizes memory.

So what do you mean the entire subsystem in linux is virtual? When it reports that it's using up that amount of ram it isnt using it at all and it's actually using up virtual memory? why would it report it in the swap memory usage?