memory reported less than installed

Bill Walton bill.walton at charter.net
Mon Aug 11 20:46:36 UTC 2008


Rashkae wrote:
>
> I'm on a Gutsy 64-bit system with 3GB of memory.
>
> Free:
>
> Mem:       3097740    3068932      28808          0     254064    1468900
> -/+ buffers/cache:    1345968    1751772
> Swap:      3903712          0    3903712
>
> System Monitor, System tab, Hardware: 3.0 GiB
>

IIRC, when I had 2GB installed, System Monitor reported 2GiB.  Now, with 10
GB installed, it's 9.7 GiB.

free reports:
                   total             used          free          shared
buffers     cached
Mem:      10190576     582064    9608512          0      17072     290696
-/+ buffers/cache:     274296    9916280
Swap:      6040400          0    6040400

Total / 1024 / 1024  = 9.69, so I'd say David Fox hit it on the head when he
said "System Monitor would simply report the same total memory value as
"free" does."  But that still doesn't explain where the rest went or why
it's not 'taken out' when the installed amount is < 4GB.  I remember reading
that Windows may report 3.5GB or something close when there's 4GB installed.
I wonder if there's something similar going on here.  Anyway... what's 300
meg among friends?  ;-)  If anybody's got 4GB or more installed, it would be
nice to hear what you see.

Thanks to all,
Bill





More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list