Re: [K12OSN] Linux Memory Management
Dan Young (dan_young@parkrose.k12.or.us)
Wed, 23 Oct 2002 21:43:32 -0700 (PDT)
Caleb Wagnon said:
> Can you guys give me a basic understanding of how Linux manages memory?
> How does it differ from say, Win2k? My web server has 2 gig of ram, is
> used heavily, and top shows that I only have a few megs of ram free. The
> performance of the server however is great. Everything is screaming fast
> and I rarely hear the hard drives make a sound. It has been running like
> this flawlessly for a few months (it’s not but a few months old). I was
> just curious as to what is going on, is linux “buffering” my memory or
> something?
Here's my crude understanding of why Linux systems will typically show
very little "free" memory. Other people here understand this much more
completely and should weigh in.
Linux uses otherwise unused memory to cache/buffer recent disk activity.
These are flushed if something else needs the memory, so as not to
diminish the amount of memory available for other processes. This is a
good thing. Use "free" to see the breakdown for yourself.
Here's what google turned up on the topic:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/buffer-cache.html
-Dan Young
-Parkrose School District
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