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free -m tool question
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Posted by koppan, 08-23-2007, 04:58 PM Hi, I am trying to use free -m tool to check memory usage and I am having issues with understanding. >free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1003 987 15 0 147 505 -/+ buffers/cache: 334 668 Swap: 2000 4 1995 How come cached value is 505 since used value is 987, does cached is included in used 987? If you know the detail please explain, thanks in advance.
Posted by macker, 08-23-2007, 05:05 PM used' is total amount used, including what's in cache. "free" is misleading... really, take the "free" column, subtract the "cached" column, and that's how much RAM _could_ be allocated if software was requesting it. in the meantime, it just puts that idle RAM to use, doing caching, and improving the performance of your server. if the "cached" value drops low, and the "free" value is also low, then you should add more RAM; if the system has to start relying on swap, performance will likely degrade, possibly severely, to the point that the system can become unresponsive under some high-load situations.
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