Further memory question [was: Clear the computer's memory?]

[R Kimber]

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:29:19 -0500
Kent Borg <kentborg at borg.org> wrote:

> > Yes, I know about the general principles, it's what particular
> > 'thing' (s) it is that I''m trying to discover.
> 
> Ah, there I can be of less help other than to say it isn't going to be
> easy.  The glib answer is "probably cache'.  For more detail, starting
> with analyzing the output from "top" and comparing it before and after
> will answer some questions about what applications are using memory,
> and carefully watching cache and buffer sizes will answer some other
> more vague questions, but the Linux memory system is complicated.
> >From what I can tell those who programmed it don't find it easy to
> know what all is going on.

After finding a way to install Dapper (the normal install program
doesn't work on my machine), I have used 2.6.15-20-amd64-generic for
some time since my last post on this topic.  Interestingly the
phenomenon that I was 'complaining' about, and looking for an
explanation for, does not occur with this kernel.

It seems that either memory management is quite different in 2.6.15, or
(more likely) there was a problem that has now been
fixed.

Thanks for all the comments.

- Richard
-- 
Richard Kimber
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/