[PLUG] Memory Usage

[श्रीधर नारायण दैठणकर]

On Wednesday 19 Sep 2007 23:51:36 Ajay wrote:
>  Hi, I have a RHEL 4 server. It has 12GB RAM, when I issue a free command
> it shows 11GB as used. But I don't think so the proceses are using such a
> huge amount of memory since the sum of memory used by all the processes in
> ps -aux command is not equal to the total used memory shown by free
> comand.The used memory size on that server keeps on increasing. any reason
> why?After it reaches more than 11GB the size of used memory suddenly drops
> and becomes 2 GB.
>
> What is the actuall memory that my server is using at a particular point of
> time?Please suggest. Thanks,Ajay

Check second line of free for used and free columns.
--------------
$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        964840     663844     300996          0      76972     329668
-/+ buffers/cache:     257204     707636
Swap:        65528          0      65528
--------------

Here the real used memory is about 257MB. 

HTH

 Shridhar