Memory Size and Swap issue
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 89 73 15 0 12 23
-/+ buffers/cache: 38 51
Swap: 256 40 216
I have 2 questions:
1) Why does it show 89 for Mem? Is that an issue of 1024 to 1000 conversions?
2) Why am I using swap for so many things even though I have 15MB free physical memory?
2 Replies
caker
Linode Staff
@Crisis:
1) Why does it show 89 for Mem? Is that an issue of 1024 to 1000 conversions?
That's the Linux kernel taking a little bit of memory for itself. Here's the output on a "real" box with 3072 megs of physical RAM:
[root@host4 vbin]# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3037 3031 5 0 25 2784
-/+ buffers/cache: 221 2815
Swap: 4094 145 3949
@Crisis:
2) Why am I using swap for so many things even though I have 15MB free physical memory?
That's the linux VM system in effect – it will utilize all of your available memory, including swapping things out that aren't used that often, to make room for buffers/cache.
-Chris
