Re: Amount of free mem decreasing..

From: nntp (asf_at_sadfkj.cosdf)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 05:41:45 -0500

Gotcha.. Thanks for the info..

I was under the impression that this was something bad and that i would run
out of memory next week thus needing a reboot. Your explination sounds good
to me.

"André Gulliksen" <andre.gulliksen@start.no> wrote in message
news:33hvg3F3unol9U1@individual.net...
> nntp wrote:
> > it started graphing at about 800M of free memory. Gradually (and
> > pretty evenly) it has been decreasing. After about 1 1/2 to 2 weeks I
> > am currently at 365M free. I don't know of anything that would be
> > doing this.. I didn't really install all my apps yet, just the basics.
>
> Most likely you have memory that is used but not freed, simply because
your
> system still has plenty of memory to spare. Recently accessed data and
> programs are stilled stored in memory for speedy retrieval if they should
be
> required again.
>
> You may want to monitor 'top' and 'ps -aux' for processes eating a lot of
> memory, or processes respawning wildly. But unless you find anything I
would
> settle for the explanation above, and not worry again until you start
> experiencing heavy page usage.
>
> You may also want to read 'man top', especially the section called
> "Description of memory".
>
> > I dont' see any zombie processes.. Any ideas what could be causing
> > this? Is there a command I can run to free unused memory?
>
> If you do not want your memory to be used, remove it from your computer.
> Seriously. As far as the computer is concerned, unused memory is wasted
> memory, and if your computer finds the slightest use for it (such as
storing
> a program that you may or may not want to use again) it will. Forcing the
> computer to release cached memory will give you a nicer looking free
memory
> figure, but it will also most likely reduce overall performance.
>
>

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