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#1 2005-04-22 16:17:53

ingvildr
Member
From: Brighton, England
Registered: 2005-04-19
Posts: 203

losing ram

this is probably a stupid question but its bothering me, i started up gkrellm on arch and it said i had 240mb of ram when not long ago it said i had 243mb, and anyway i should have 256  :?  where has it gone :cry:

edit: and now i added the systemload plugin to my xfce4 panel and it says i have 239, why all the different readings?

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#2 2005-04-22 16:20:59

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: losing ram

dunno... try running "free" from a console... how much ram does "top" say you have? could just be a gkrellm bug

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#3 2005-04-22 16:26:00

ingvildr
Member
From: Brighton, England
Registered: 2005-04-19
Posts: 203

Re: losing ram

"free" says i have 245500, but also says i've used 235344 whats that mean?, i'm not using that much

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#4 2005-04-22 20:02:34

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: losing ram

Nah, don't get bothered by that. Different monitors show different values, some show used memory together with cached one, some doesn't etc. As for ~240 mb instead of 256 - tmpfs (/dev/shm and /tmp) 'eats' some of the initial ram. For example I got ~502 mb of total ram available instead of 512.

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#5 2005-04-23 01:50:03

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: losing ram

Do you have integrated graphics? That steals ram.

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#6 2005-04-23 03:12:19

Stinky
Member
From: The Colony, TX
Registered: 2004-05-28
Posts: 187

Re: losing ram

"free" says i have 245500, but also says i've used 235344 whats that mean?, i'm not using that much

That's just the way linux handles memory.  Linux is written to use memory if it is there.  So, it uses memory for disk cache.  Keeping the cache means that if something needs the same data again, there's a good chance it will still be in the cache.  And if it is, it's going to be a LOT faster.  Because getting information from there is about 1000 times faster than getting it from hard disk.   Keep in mind, that cached memory is essentially free.  Meaning it can be replaced quickly at any time if a running program or newly launched program needs it.
Any way.  Hope this helps.  I'm not great at explaining things.
Tim

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#7 2005-04-23 13:58:24

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: losing ram

free -m gives a nice output. The line with "-/+ buffers/cache:" gives the more real ram usage, as the rest will be filled with either cache or buffer data anyway (which is only freed if ram is needed by something more important like an app).

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