On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 03:25, Dan Jacobson wrote: > Instead of doing shutdown, I did init 1, doing away with X windows, > etc. and in maintenance mode, I did top(1). However it reported > total memory usage still as high as ever. How might that be? > > P.S. is that the usual way to get rid of X windows if in case one > wants just to use the humble console? I know there is a startx > program, but no stopx. >
Linux and unix always use all of the memory. If you have very little stuff running, it uses it for cache of systems files and binaries. If you run a program and it requires memory... linux just grabs memory from cache. It is all dynamic. (well sort of) Here are the relevant lines from top before Enabling X: Mem: 515624k total, 485828k used, 29796k free, 180864k buffers Swap: 1020116k total, 4260k used, 1015856k free, 82656k cached Here it is after enabling X: Mem: 515624k total, 507468k used, 8156k free, 180868k buffers Swap: 1020116k total, 4260k used, 1015856k free, 84476k cached And once again after disabling X: Mem: 515624k total, 486040k used, 29584k free, 180868k buffers Swap: 1020116k total, 4260k used, 1015856k free, 82688k cached As you can see it matters a bit but not much. So not to worry... except when the used swap get over used. (subjective) -- greg, [EMAIL PROTECTED] REMEMBER ED CURRY! http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry
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