Memory

[tunaman]

I checked the amount of memory I was using while running Mandrake 7.2 the other day. I was shocked to see that I was using 78% of 256 Megs of physcial ram and 0% of the paging file. Is this normal? Does linux normally use that much ram?

Thanks,

Ryan

[Paul Weaver]

I think it caches your swap file in RAM - whether there is anything in the swap file.

I'm just guessing though. Right now I have 194MB used memory, including 54MB cached. My swap space is empty, and I've got 60MB free.

Type free and look at the buffered/cache line.

[idealego]

Linux 2.2+ uses aggressive file caching and it's only logical to not use virtual memory until you run of ram or at least come close to running out. (certain other os's don't seem to understand this)

[Derango]

As I understand it, when you change a file on your hard drive, linux does not save that change right away to the drive. What it does instead is cache it in the RAM, so in case you wanted to make another change to the file, it would open up quicker (due to the fact RAM is much faster than a hard drive.


Once you run out of physcial ram space, it should write all of the cached data it has in the RAM to the hard drive and remove that data from the phsyical memory.


------------------
This space For Rent

[This message has been edited by Derango (edited 22 November 2000).]

[ille_pugil42]

and that's why when a linux box is shut off prematurely, bad things happen, eh?

[YaRness]

probably at least one of the reasons

------------------
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind."
Registered Linux User #188285 http://counter.li.org/
------------------