Mike,
Try putting both commands together as 'grep ^Cached /proc/meminfo; free'
By the time you entered the second command, memory usage may change by then 
especially on an active server.

Alex Suthammanont


-----Original Message-----
From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael 
MacIsaac
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 11:01 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Amount of memory in buffers shown by the free command

Hello list,

Does anyone know why free shows a different amount of cached memory that 
/proc/meminfo? For example:

# grep ^Cached /proc/meminfo
Cached:           277660 kB
# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1020416     623016     397400          0     120336     342508
...

So 271 MB vs. 334 MB

That was on SLES 11 SP2.  Interesting, I try a RHEL 6.3 system and see much 
closer numbers:

# grep ^Cached /proc/meminfo
Cached:            38772 kB
# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        245772     235684      10088          0      94696      38824

Here, "free" shows only 52 KB more.

I must be looking at "apples and oranges", but I'm not sure why.  snmp seems to 
agree with /proc/meminfo.

Any help will be appreciated.  Thanks.

"Mike MacIsaac" <mikemac at-sign us.ibm.com>

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