Free some memory ?

[Donovan]

I use my linux debian as a web server.
On my 512 megs of ram, I had about 300 free.

I did a system backup so I tar all my /var/www directory.

After the backup, I noticed I only have 100 megs of ram free. which means it seems the entire backup is stored in memory ?!

Is there now way to free the memory ?
The memory used during the backup is really used for nothing, I'm afraid I'll start to swap soon because my memory is now dirty with the backup data.

How will linux deal with all this ?

Thanks,
Donov

[demian]

No need to worry here. The way Linux handles memory is that as long as there's free RAM available it is filled with stuff that never gets deleted unless you run out of memory. If your memory is full and new stuff needs to go in it the data that hasn't been accessed for the longest time gets deleted (or swapped) to make room for the new stuff.