505/512 used? free/top reading.

nixel · 05-12-2004, 05:24 PM

i ran 'free' and 'top' and it says im using 505/512MB or memory is this correct? why is it doing this?

free:

Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        514888     505404       9484          0      77016     234560
-/+ buffers/cache:     193828     321060
Swap:       215168          0     215168

top:

Code:

41 processes: 39 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:   0.1% user   0.3% system   0.0% nice   0.0% iowait  99.4% idle
Mem:   514888k av,  505860k used,    9028k free,       0k shrd,   77028k buff
       215412k active,             135712k inactive
Swap:  215168k av,       0k used,  215168k free                  234560k cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME CPU COMMAND
   12 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.1  0.0   0:28   0 kjournald
 2278 root      15   0  148M  18M  133M S     0.1  3.6   8:36   0 X
 5379 centro    16   0  1920 1028  1784 R     0.1  0.1   0:00   0 top
    1 root      16   0   488  240   464 S     0.0  0.0   0:03   0 init
    2 root      34  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00   0 ksoftirqd/0
    3 root       5 -10     0    0     0 SW<   0.0  0.0   0:00   0 events/0
    4 root       5 -10     0    0     0 SW<   0.0  0.0   0:04   0 kblockd/0
    6 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 pdflush
    5 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 khubd
    7 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:12   0 pdflush
    9 root      13 -10     0    0     0 SW<   0.0  0.0   0:00   0 aio/0
    8 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kswapd0
   10 root      19   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 khpsbpkt
   11 root      16   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kseriod
  402 root      16   0  1444  616  1388 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 syslogd
  405 root      15   0  1376  464  1344 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 klogd
  408 root      19   0  1368  436  1344 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 inetd
  420 root      16   0  1500  592  1460 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 crond
  422 daemon    16   0  1508  648  1464 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 atd
  426 root      18   0  1380  556  1340 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 acpid
  454 root      16   0  1428  536  1388 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 gpm
  458 root      17   0  1372  488  1336 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 agetty
  459 root      17   0  1372  488  1336 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 agetty
  460 root      17   0  1372  488  1336 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 agetty
  461 root      16   0  1372  488  1336 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 agetty
  462 root      17   0  1372  488  1336 S     0.0  0.0   0:00   0 agetty
 1591 centro    15   0  2304 1308  2084 S     0.0  0.2   0:00   0 bash
 2265 centro    16   0  2048  976  1960 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 startx
 2277 centro    18   0  2188  620  2148 S     0.0  0.1   0:00   0 xinit
 2284 centro    15   0  5000 2612  4580 S     0.0  0.5   0:02   0 fluxbox
 2401 centro    16   0 17680  12M 14524 S     0.0  2.4   0:31   0 gaim
 4130 root      16   0  3088 1424  2832 S     0.0  0.2   0:00   0 sshd
 4803 centro    18   0  2104 1040  1960 S     0.0  0.2   0:00   0 run-mozilla.sh
 4809 centro    15   0 50864  31M 26544 S     0.0  6.2   0:28   0 netscape-bin
 5348 centro    16   0  5480 3084  4648 R     0.0  0.5   0:00   0 xterm
 5350 centro    15   0  2300 1308  2084 S     0.0  0.2   0:00   0 bash

why is it taking so much?

btmiller · 05-12-2004, 05:31 PM

Linux uses memory differently than other operating systems you may be familiar with. Memory not be used by the system is wasted, so the OS uses as much as it can for buffering and caching of programs. If an applications wants some of that memory, the OS will release some of the buffer space to it. In this way, your memory is always used efficiently.

There are some settings in /proc/sys/vm that you can modify to change how the kernel virtual memory system works, but you probably shouldn't unless you have a good reason and know what you want to accomplish.

nixel · 05-13-2004, 12:49 AM

it just seems as if when memory adds up like this everything starts lagging and my mouse sometimes lags.