Shimon Panfil wrote:
> Hi folks,
> I see a considerable difference between total used memory reported by
> top and the sum of total sizes of processes.
> In particular (gtop):Sum of total sizes 92624K
> memory used:203948K
>
> Can anybody explain this?
Yes. Linux is very efficient in it's use of memory and doesn't let free
memory be wasted. If you have unused free memory Linux will use it for
caching and buffers to make things like disk access faster. These
buffers will be released automaticaly when the memory is needed.
This means that to get the actual *available* memory on the system (as
opposed to free memory) you'll have to add the free memory together with
the buffers/cache memory.
The special file /proc/sys/vm/buffercache can be used to control how
much buffer memory is used and when to allocate and free it.
--
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://benyossef.com :: +972(54)756701
"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, while interrupts are disabled. "
-- Murphey's law of kernel programing.
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