Linux aggressively uses extra memory as file cache. Free memory just
sitting out there is basically useless, so linux uses it to cache recently
accessed files. This dramatically reduces disk i/o...you definitely want
this.
As a result your memory will keep increasing and never go down. This is
not a bad thing... if you really want to see this in action do a
find / -exec cat {} \; > /dev/null
and watch in top as your free memory goes down down...
File cache memory is low priority... when a program needs memory, file
cache is the first to go. Your box will start swapping when it's really
out of memory. You should run 'vmstat 1' and watch the si and so (swap
in, swap out)columns... You can also look at swap in top, but linux will
always use a little swap. vmstat is one of the best tools to see what's
really going on...
ray
On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Jeff Lee wrote:
> I have a redhat 9 server that keeps using up all of the ram until I reboot.
> I rebooted last night and not it is back at 60%... by tonight it will be up
> to 80-90%. I use top and see that the main processes - spamassassin apache
> communigate clamav take up about 60~100mb of ram (the server has 1006mb) How
> can I stop this from happening? I run top and I dont see any memory hogging
> programs? What is taking all of my ram? The server is updated as much as
> possible. I am running on kernel 2.4.20-19.9
>
> This is from top: (swap never goes up... like it doesnt get used much)
>
> Mem: 1030668k av, 642996k used, 387672k free, 0k shrd, 169708k
> buff
> 299524k actv, 20024k in_d, 21924k in_c
> Swap: 262072k av, 840k used, 261232k free 107868k
> cached
>
> 2472 root 15 0 32388 31M 1568 S 0.0 3.1 0:02 0 cgpsa
> 2390 root 15 0 20564 20M 4784 S 0.0 1.9 0:10 0 rcd
> 2237 root 16 0 12020 11M 568 S 0.0 1.1 0:05 0 clamdexec
> 2221 root 15 0 5756 4964 1688 S 0.0 0.4 0:01 0 CGServer
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