[NTLUG:Discuss] where's the memory?

[brian@pongonova.net]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 12:18:35AM -0600, kbrannen at gte.net wrote:
> I've got a SuSE 7.3 system (upgraded from 7.1) that seems to be leaking 
> memory like a sieve (or almost that bad. :-)  Upon boot and starting X, I 
> find that I'm using about 32M or so of memory.  However, after using the 
> system for a few hours over several days, I'll suddenly notice that I've 
> used almost all my physical RAM.  Like now! :-)
> 
> The "free" command shows:
>              total    used    free  shared buffers  cached
> Mem:        384648  352976   31672       0   28392   41476
> -/+ buffers/cache:  283108  101540
> Swap:       265060     796  264264

There's nothing wrong with this picture.  The kernel allocates most of the system
free memory for its own use -- file cache buffers, etc.  The important number to
look at is "swap-used."  If this starts increasing, then that's an almost sure sign
of a memory leak.  Otherwise, everything looks OK.  (Try "top" for a
process-by-process view of your memory usage.)

  --Brian