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-   -   Memory Consumption of 10.2 (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/memory-consumption-of-10-2-a-477372/)

naparhi 08-25-2006 03:43 PM

Memory Consumption of 10.2
 
Hello,

after updating my system from Slackware 9.1 to 10.2 top and ksys report 70.000k of free memory under the follwing conditions:

X Running
KDE running
Swap 987988K total (0% used)

Machine:
Intel Pentium III
256MB Memory
10GB Harddisk (reiserfs)


Is the consumption of memory realistic? 9.1 used much less (about 100000K).
Or may this be due to the missing HIMEM option?
Were the 9.1 kernels precompiled with this option turned on?

Free reports:

Mem: total=256076, used=239672, free=16404, buffers=56340, cached=119840 (without running a browser)
-/+ buffers/cache: used=63492, free=192584
Swap: 987988 used=0

tuxdev 08-25-2006 03:46 PM

Post the output of free, it is known to be more accurate than say, top

hussar 08-25-2006 07:20 PM

How much of your memory is being used will depend in part on how many programs you are running and how many programs you have run. You should also not try to compare memory (RAM) usage with memory usage in Windows (if that is your previous baseline experience) since Windows and Uni*-like systems use memory differently. If your system runs long enough, it will use all of your memory, but through the magic of Uni*-like memory management, you won't run out.

For example, here is the output from the command `uptime ; free` on my system:

bash-3.1$ uptime ; free
02:11:47 up 1 day, 14:34, 1 user, load average: 2.22, 2.13, 1.66
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 515176 509036 6140 0 5320 126324
-/+ buffers/cache: 377392 137784
Swap: 1052248 3976 1048272

Unless some rogue application has used more RAM and/or CPU cycles than it should have, I have never had any memory-related problems with this system. I am currently running three aterm consoles (one of which is doing a slapt-get update), firefox with seven tabs open, thunderbird monitoring three email accounts and grip ripping Pink Floyd's "Echoes" CD to my NFS mounted music library.

Bottomline: I don't think you have anything to worry about memory-wise.

nuxrl 08-25-2006 08:30 PM

If you are curious about which process is taking the memory, install a "htop". It certainly can give you more information about your system.

http://htop.sourceforge.net/

naparhi 08-27-2006 03:10 AM

Memory Consumption of 10.2
 
Thank You all,

in the meantime I found a thread of 05-17-2004 which pointed to 'free'. Following these explanations the memory consumption is ok. Up to now the swap space has not been used by the system.

I'll try to understand more of mechanism of memory allocation in Unix (I'm coming from S390/MVS and Windows).

Kind regards

naparhi


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