Yesterday, James R. Van Zandt gleaned this insight:
> vanzandt:~$ cat /proc/meminfo
> total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
> Mem: 64524288 41836544 22687744 25706496 9859072 15622144
> Swap: 106885120 0 106885120
> MemTotal: 63012 kB
> MemFree: 22156 kB
> MemShared: 25104 kB
> Buffers: 9628 kB
> Cached: 15256 kB
> SwapTotal: 104380 kB
> SwapFree: 104380 kB
> vanzandt:~$ calc 22687744+41836544
> 64524288
> vanzandt:~$ calc 25706496+9859072+15622144
> 51187712
> vanzandt:~$ calc 25706496+9859072
> 35565568
>
> I understand the first three entries, I think. (I only just booted
> this machine, so it has not buffered much from the disk, and has not
> swapped anything out.) I assume the 25M of "shared" includes all the
> shared libraries I'm using. I also assume that "buffers" have copies
> of data recently read from and/or written to the disk. However,
> I don't know what "cached" refers to. Apparently the last three
> categories are not distinct, because they add up to more than "used".
> Is anyone willing to fill me in?
I just had a discussion about that very topic with one of our kernel
weenies last week. You're almost perfect, if I understood him
correctly... Shared refers to the number of bytes being used by more than
one process (not necessarily shared libraries, can also be text pages of a
program with multiple instances). Buffers refer to I/O buffers (any
buffered I/O), while cached refers specifically to disk buffer cache.
The numbers do not add up to 100%, and will overlap.
--
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Derek D. Martin | Unix/Linux Geek
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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