> I have no other memory-eating processes in this machine, > except the usual processes necessary for running squid... > why its more important for kernel to keep the cache/buffer > in-memory and swap squid out? can I alter this somehow?
I noticed this with my Squid box as well - the OS was using swap space instead of freeing up memory used for buffers and cache (RedHat Linux 7.3). I originally had a 1 GB swap partition, and saw a similar problem - free memory was very low, but there was a large amount of buffers and cache, and some swap usage. Using parted, I resized this partition to 256 MB, and the system used less memory for buffers and cache. Try shrinking your swap partition in half (to about 1 GB) and see if that improves your memory situation. You don't have to reboot the system - just use swapoff to turn off the swap space, use parted to resize it (check /etc/fstab for the minor partition # first), then use swapon to turn it back on. Adam
