RAM and Swap

shiny_spoon · 01-12-2004, 09:41 PM

Hey everyone!

I'm still relatively new to the Linux world, but I'm getting more proficient by the day... My question is that when I look at gkrellm while running intensive apps, it indicates about 900MB of my 1GB of RAM as being free. SWAP on the other hand, is nearly completely used (or at least being used much more than RAM is).

Is there any reason for this?

If so, is there a way to tell Linux to start using RAM when it can and forget about using up my SWAP partition?! ... Using Mandrake 9.1.

Thanks in advance!

Robert0380 · 01-13-2004, 01:14 AM

check with top, maybe (and im not sure) gkrellm is mis-reporting it.

in console type top and hit enter and it shows system resource usage. CTRL+c to exit

Vyeperman · 01-13-2004, 01:21 AM

'top' in terminal will give you some accurate readings.

ugob · 01-13-2004, 04:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Robert0380
check with top, maybe (and im not sure) gkrellm is mis-reporting it.

in console type top and hit enter and it shows system resource usage. CTRL+c to exit

You can usually exit top using "q" instead of ctrl-c

shiny_spoon · 01-13-2004, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Robert0380
maybe (and im not sure) gkrellm is mis-reporting it.

And right you are... gkrellm was reporting SWAP usage accurately but for free RAM it was quite the opposite. I'll use top from now on.

Thanks for your help guys.

benjithegreat98 · 01-13-2004, 02:27 PM

you can also use free for some quick stats
free -m