[nylug-talk] Free -m shows 300MB usage after upgrade to 1GB.

[Chris Knadle]

On Wednesday 02 January 2008, sixtyfourbeets wrote:
> I am running Mepis and my machine had 512MB or RAM of which Mepis utilized
> about less than 100MB.
> I upgraded to 1GB and free -m showed 300MB being used.
>
> Both instances are with KDE running and nothing else, just sitting there.
>
> This seems a  little unusual that after a memory upgrade memory usage spike
> for no clear reason.
>
> Is there any setting in sysctl or something that I can change to force the
> machine, or certain
> apps to use less memory?

   Look at the output of 'top' again.  Have a look at the 'buffers' 
and 'cached' area -- that's probably where the extra memory usage is.  "Free" 
unused memory is wasted memory, so the Linux kernel caches the hard disk with 
the unusued memory.  This is not something to worry about; that cache memory 
space will free up with "memory pressure", I.E. when running processes ask 
for more memory.

   But if you really want to tweak, have a look at the settings 
in /proc/sys/vm/ such as /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio.

   - Chris

-- 

Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle at coredump.us