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It wouldn't be something silly like a kernel parameter that tells
the machine not to use more than that piddly amount? Check your
grub/lilo config. It certainly doesn't look right, and no, it's
not "Linux' great memory management at work".
Cheers,
Tink
Tink,
That's what I was thinking. Somewhere I'm telling Linux not to go above a certain amount of physical memory. I just can't find where it might be set. I'll check my kernel parms.
I stand corrected, if that site is correct then that is weird. What does 'top' yield for you? Unfortunately, I can't do anything with my system as I am at work right now. We don't have Linux here.
Regards,
Brandon
Dirk,
top shows the same thing: Around 350 megs of memory in use. No process is using more than a few megs of memory. CPU is hovering around 1-5% usage.
Because Linux always uses as much memory as possible.
Rubbish. It tries to effectively use the memory you have.
The article you quoted is old, and generalizes based on 90 Meg of memory. Less than 10% of what you have.
You have shown no evidence that you have a workload that requires more memory than it is using.
Rubbish. It tries to effectively use the memory you have.
The article you quoted is old, and generalizes based on 90 Meg of memory. Less than 10% of what you have.
You have shown no evidence that you have a workload that requires more memory than it is using.
Effectivley sounds better.
Anyways, I'm not lying about the "used" column should always be close to the amount of the "total" column.
Try it on any box you have whether its idle or busy.
Distribution: Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, Fedora 7, Windows XP
Posts: 91
Rep:
lol. I understand the command, but I didn't think Linux would cache nearly 700MB of RAM. But if there isn't a need to do, why do so? That's my thinking behind. Call me crazy, you already have. lol.
lol. I understand the command, but I didn't think Linux would cache nearly 700MB of RAM. But if there isn't a need to do, why do so? That's my thinking behind. Call me crazy, you already have. lol.
regards,
Brandon
Because it can and because it makes sense. rsmccain is perfectly
right in saying that the "used" should be next to same as "total",
certainly is on any Linux machine I've ever used or had my hands
on.
RAM for buffers/caching is the best thing next to super
expensive SCSI and solid-state to boost performance, to
leave it "unused" makes no sense, and is a very un-linuxy
thing to do ...
Nope. If you don't have anything chewing up I/O, the cache won't grow, and the usage will look low.
My test server at work has 4 Gig - usually sits at about that mark. I ensure I start the services I need when I need them - and that includes updatedb.
No I/O means next to no cache usage.
Should be easy enough to drive the numbers up - unnecessarily in my opinion. Fire off a decent sized database backup, and start updatedb in competition.
Nope. If you don't have anything chewing up I/O, the cache won't grow, and the usage will look low.
My test server at work has 4 Gig - usually sits at about that mark. I ensure I start the services I need when I need them - and that includes updatedb.
No I/O means next to no cache usage.
Should be easy enough to drive the numbers up - unnecessarily in my opinion. Fire off a decent sized database backup, and start updatedb in competition.
when the system is booting up and udevinfo and hwscan are maxxing out the CPU at 100% the mem used is still between 200-350.
Nope. If you don't have anything chewing up I/O, the cache won't grow, and the usage will look low.
My test server at work has 4 Gig - usually sits at about that mark. I ensure I start the services I need when I need them - and that includes updatedb.
No I/O means next to no cache usage.
Should be easy enough to drive the numbers up - unnecessarily in my opinion. Fire off a decent sized database backup, and start updatedb in competition.
Distribution: Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, Fedora 7, Windows XP
Posts: 91
Rep:
Hey,
I made it home and used the 'free -m' command. My total is 756, used is 317 (thats with klotski running, a game), cached is 133. I started up GIMP, total is 756, used 355, cached is 154. Left klotski gimp open, opened up Open Office word processor and: total 756, used 472, cached 253. So, in my case, it doesn't cache more unless more stuff is opened. I'm running a fresh install of Fedora 7, in case you were wondering.
Regards,
Brandon
Last edited by DirkDiggler; 06-01-2007 at 07:48 PM.
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