[NTLUG:Discuss] where's the memory?

[kbrannen@gte.net]

brian at pongonova.net wrote:
> 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.)

I understand caching and buffers (which is why I asked about the 283M number 
instead of the 352M number. :-)  But when "ps" reports that I'm only using 50M 
instead of the 283M reports by free, xosview, and top, I start to wonder where 
that other 223M went.  I mean, it could be very useful if I start to do 
development work here. :-)  So I'd like to know why there's an inconsistency 
between ps and the others.

Kevin