releasing memory
 

I have an RHEL 3.0 server running Oracle. The server has only 24 megs of memory free out of 12 gigs on the system.
Oracles SGA can use less than 2 gigs. I know it is not oracle using the majority of it.
Is there a way to free memory without rebooting?
Here is the output of /proc/meminfo:

total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 12623937536 12602458112 21479424 0 114479104 11224715264
Swap: 8973692928 729088 8972963840
MemTotal: 12328064 kB
MemFree: 20976 kB
MemShared: 0 kB
Buffers: 111796 kB
Cached: 10961480 kB
SwapCached: 156 kB
Active: 2486148 kB
ActiveAnon: 1917724 kB
ActiveCache: 568424 kB
Inact_dirty: 6966720 kB
Inact_laundry: 1820964 kB
Inact_clean: 291836 kB
Inact_target: 2313132 kB
HighTotal: 11661040 kB
HighFree: 5288 kB
LowTotal: 667024 kB
LowFree: 15688 kB
SwapTotal: 8763372 kB
SwapFree: 8762660 kB
CommitLimit: 14927404 kB
Committed_AS: 4808956 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB


Any hints with this problem greatly appreciated.

This is asked all the time and it's normal in Linux for all of your memory to be used.

Notice in your output this line:

Cached: 10961480 kB

Most of your or all of it is cached, you're pretty much only using 2GB of it right now as you can see that under:

Active: 2486148 kB

Thanks Tk!!!!!!!