Arch Linux

Cheesecake Charlie

Member

Registered: 2011-09-08

Posts: 94

High Ram Usage

Hi All

I have just had to do a clean install and i'm running arch + openbox, but i seem to have high ram usage.  This is my free -m output

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7663       1514       6148          0         38        982
-/+ buffers/cache:        493       7169
Swap:        15999          0      15999

This is my fstab setup

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>	<dir>	<type>	<options>	<dump>	<pass>

tmpfs		/tmp	tmpfs	nodev,nosuid	0	0

/dev/sda1 / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda2 /var ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda4 /home ext4 defaults 0 1

I am not running anything i have not run before, ie apache, mysql, samba, cups etc but for some reason, my Ram is idling at 18% and on occasions when i close some apps it does not reduce.

Any suggestions please ?

Cheers

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: High Ram Usage

my Ram is idling at 18% and on occasions

Where did you get that 18% from? You're using 493 MB. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FA … _my_RAM.3F
You want to be using your RAM, that's what you got it for.

Last edited by karol (2011-11-28 08:29:39)

Cheesecake Charlie

Member

Registered: 2011-09-08

Posts: 94

Re: High Ram Usage

my Ram is idling at 18% and on occasions

Where did you get that 18% from? You're using 493 MB. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FA … _my_RAM.3F
You want to be using your RAM, that's what you got it for.

@Karol

The 18% figure is from conky ... and yes i agree, its why i got 8gb of ram in the first place, its just i have never seen so much used, so i just thought it strange.  But what is strange is that on occasions after i have had some apps open and then close, the ram usage remains the same, it does not decrease, if that makes sense ?

Cheers

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: High Ram Usage

I have no idea how conky measures "used RAM" but 1514 / 7663 = 19.8%.
Yes, it's OK for data to still occupy RAM if there's enough free RAM. You can flush it to disk, but what for?

Cheesecake Charlie

Member

Registered: 2011-09-08

Posts: 94

Re: High Ram Usage

I have no idea how conky measures "used RAM" but 1514 / 7663 = 19.8%.
Yes, it's OK for data to still occupy RAM if there's enough free RAM. You can flush it to disk, but what for?

Ok cheers, its something i had not noticed before ... No problem

eduardo.eae

Member

From: Reconquista - Argentina

Registered: 2010-01-24

Posts: 68

Re: High Ram Usage

In conky use the option "no_buffers yes".
This way it doesn't show memory used by buffers/cache.