If looking at top, then you can usually assume that free memory is roughly a little less than 'free + buffers + cached'.
free is not used at all - this is memory being wasted by the system, thus is usually kept minimized (just enough to prevent deadlocks)
buffers can usually be flushed to disk or dropped
cached is the disk cache and can also be dropped
but even then part of the remaining used memory is readonly-file-backed (for example executables) and can also be dropped (in low memory situations)...
I'd guess the proper answer is that if it works nicely then you have enough RAM :) if it doesn't - you need more.
Cheers, MaZe.
On Mon, 30 May 2005, israel.garcia@cimex.com.cu wrote:
List, I've installed my CentOS Server running progress 9.1D database system, with only 15 users working every day, this server has 2GB RAM, so, my question is: Why the 2GB of RAM is always used? Even with only one user connected... How can I messuare the real RAM MEM used by my system split in proccess? Is there another tools which I use to compare the results from top. Or vmstat?
Regards, Israel
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