Re: v2.1.51: Memory lost? PLEASE(!) help...

joost witteveen (joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl)
Mon, 25 Aug 1997 12:42:09 +0200 (CEST)

> Hi!
>
> I have reported this several times but haven't got any response.
>
> Because it is completly mysterious to me, I would really be VERY happy, if
> one could give a hint even if this is :
>
> 1) ...reported and/or solved by someone else before.
> 2) ...a completely silly newbie question. A newbie only will become a "guru"
> after years of questions AND answers... ;-)
>
> And now: what happens?
>
> After a while runnning linux with several applicatuons, I "lost" memory...
>
> For me the sum of MemFree, MemShared, Buffers, Cached
> (by using "cat /proc/meminfo") memory usage has to be (nearly)
> the value of MemTotal, isn't it?

No. Look at this:

MemTotal: 47244 kB
MemFree: 776 kB
MemShared: 85632 kB
Buffers: 2404 kB
Cached: 8804 kB
SwapTotal: 61452 kB
SwapFree: 56672 kB

This is after I started several (about 20) xterms.
As you can see, I've only got 48M total, but MemShared is already 85M.
(Shared reports the amount of memory saved because different applications
each use the same binaries/libaries (xterm+it's libraries, in this case).
This can be much more than the total of memory).

Note that "used" memory isn't included in the tagged /proc/meninfo
lists. So, in my case (above), about all of my memory is "used", and
I'm saving an awfull lot by linux's smart sharing of memory.

>
> I have tried to close all applications (only X, fvwm and a module of fvwm
> and one rxvt/bash were running beside the other deamons and system stuff).

Apparently, you use about 20M still for X and the daemons you're also running.
Very well possible.

> What is going on in my box???

It's running linux. Be happy.

-- 
joost witteveen, joostje@debian.org
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#what's this? see http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/