On Sun, Mar 28, 1999 at 05:52:24PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote: > "free" is misleading. After you've been running for a bit and several > processes have been run and closed, their code & data persist in memory > in case they are needed again. If anything new needs memory, then the > memory space of something not in use is reclaimed. So the net result is > that (a) it looks as though your memory is full, because "free" adds up > all this idle stuff; (b) you will notice an improvement in performance > because of this; (c) you shouldn't find that new processes encounter > memory problems. > > To test this, start something big for the first time since last boot. It > will probably take several seconds before you see it starting to run. > Then close it, and restart it. You should find that it starts up much > faster the second time, because it's already in memory. Then start > somnething else big, and close it, and then restart the first big one. > Depending on how much RAM you have, you may find that it once again takes > a long time to get going because the second one pinched the memory the > first was using. > > "ps", on the other hand, only adds up memory used by active processes, > so it almost always tells you that much less memory is in use. I thought this was accounted for in the line which mentioned +/- buffers, but guess not; thanks! There isn't a command which adds takes account for this caching and reports memory free to programs is there (or should I write a little script to do this?).
thanks, -- Chris <- Visit Me At <http://www.frostnet.advicom.net/chris/> -> <------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Public PGP Key: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject "retrieve pgpkey" or visit <http://www.frostnet.advicom.net/chris/pgp_key.phtml>
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