buffers/cache too big?

combuster · 2009-07-18 09:23:27

Conky and gnome-system-monitor reports different size of free memory then top and free.

IE: conky and system-monitor reports 750MB used on 2GB system
free and top reports:

Mem: 2049268 1408780 640488 0 104160 530168
-/+ buffers/cache: 774452 1274816

Ok, when I substract total memory used with buffers/cache I get a value near the one that system-monitor reports...
And funny thing is that reports of virtual memory and resident memory per process with top and gnome-system monitor are realy high

20 0 505m 37m 16m S 0 1.9 0:05.39 nautilus
20 0 652m 89m 26m S 11 4.5 8:49.81 exaile
20 0 230m 33m 16m S 4 1.7 0:03.02 gnome-system-mo

I dont think these values are normal...

djszapi · 2009-07-18 19:18:21

Hello combuster!

Top can show a large value in lot of case, i don't think so it's problem, free shows good values.

So what's the problem with top/free ? Can you feel your computer is slow or what ?

Kernel-1 · 2009-07-19 01:03:38

djszapi, can you elaborate this "Top can show a large value in lot of case", a little bit, please?

Greeting to all, BTW, new member.

combuster · 2009-07-19 08:31:21

Mem: 2001 851 1149 0 54 255
-/+ buffers/cache: 541 1459
Swap: 3906 0 3906
Total: 5907 851 5056

Free reports 851MB used but conky shows 545 so as system monitor. As the uptime gets larger the difference is bigger as I described in the first post.

Wintervenom · 2009-07-19 08:41:16

Never mind.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-08-03 13:54:31)

combuster · 2009-07-19 10:53:31

I don't think that 300MB could made the difference between these measurement standards ;-)

Can anyone look at system monitor and report how much virtual memory is used by processes in gnome (u have to enable virtual memory in preferences)...

kgas · 2009-07-19 13:16:40

I don't feel there is a huge difference with free/top
top
Mem: 2065236k total, 1209248k used, 855988k free, 149684k buffers
Swap: 2096408k total, 0k used, 2096408k free, 787292k cached

free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2065236 1208896 856340 0 149656 787232
-/+ buffers/cache: 272008 1793228
Swap: 2096408 0 2096408

Garns · 2009-07-19 14:23:29

The value system monitor reports seems to be more or less the same as free -/+ buffers/cache, which makes sense. In fact buffers+cache can't be to big: Linux uses free memory to cache data to improve system performance, the alternative would be leaving the memory empty, which would be quite useless. Should the memory used for caching be needed by some program it will be freed and given to that program. There are lots of articles on the net explaining this behaviour in detail, i.e.:

http://sourcefrog.net/weblog/software/l … e-mem.html
http://chrisjohnston.org/2009/why-on-li … -ram-usage

Arch Linux

#1 2009-07-18 09:23:27

buffers/cache too big?

#2 2009-07-18 19:18:21

Re: buffers/cache too big?

#3 2009-07-19 01:03:38

Re: buffers/cache too big?

#4 2009-07-19 08:31:21

Re: buffers/cache too big?

#5 2009-07-19 08:41:16

Re: buffers/cache too big?

#6 2009-07-19 10:53:31

Re: buffers/cache too big?

#7 2009-07-19 13:16:40

Re: buffers/cache too big?

#8 2009-07-19 14:23:29

Re: buffers/cache too big?

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