Ubuntu Eats My Memory

[Ruben Laban]

On Wednesday 17 October 2007, Arun wrote:
> top - 15:49:32 up 2 days, 21:33, 1 user, load average: 0.26, 0.28, 0.20
> Tasks: 57 total, 2 running, 55 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 4.5%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 94.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.5%si , 0.0%st
> Mem: 2074972k total, 2019180k used, 55792k free, 228732k buffers
> Swap: 6072528k total, 108k used, 6072420k free, 1383868k cached
> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
> 1 root 18 0 2912 1848 524 S 0 0.1 0:01.44 init
> 2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
>
> I am using tomcat and mysql and I have really a heavy tomcat running. My
> unbunuts 2GB got filled up. So I stopped the server and waited for
> sometime. Also I stopped the mysql. All I got was a 300MB change , my
> machine is running on 1.7GB Ram now !!.
> What is the reason. Can you guys help.

In your output of top it shows "1383868k cached". So basicly there's roughly 
1.3GB of memory 'in use' as cache. If you'd use the command "free -m", you'd 
see that the cache isn't 'really' using the memory. Cache memory can be freed 
when a program needs it.

HTH,
-- 
Ruben