Linux memory
From DWIKI
Links
- Linux ate my RAM!
- Understanding /proc/meminfo
- How to Clear RAM Memory Cache, Buffer and Swap Space on Linux
- How to interpret output from Linux 'top' command?
- Understanding VM swappiness
- https://serverfault.com/questions/85470/meaning-of-the-buffers-cache-line-in-the-output-of-free
Documentation
man 5 proc
see /proc/meminfo
total
Is MemTotal in /proc/meminfo
Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved bits and the kernel binary code)
used
total - free - buffers - cache
unused
MemFree
RSS
Resident Set Size
RSS and VSZ inLinux memory management
"memory is allocated to that process and is in RAM. It does not include memory that is swapped out. It does include memory from shared libraries as long as the pages from those libraries are actually in memory. It does include all stack and heap memory."
VSZ / VmSize
Virtual Memory Size It includes all memory that the process can access, including memory that is swapped out, memory that is allocated, but not used, and memory that is from shared libraries.
FAQ
What is using all my memory?
smem -r -s swap| head -n3
What is using all my swap?
for file in /proc/*/status ; do awk '/VmSwap|Name/{printf $2 " " $3}END{ print ""}' $file; done | sort -k 2 -n -r | less
or to just list top 3
for file in /proc/*/status ; do awk '/VmSwap|Name/{printf $2 " " $3}END{ print ""}' $file; done | sort -k 2 -n -r | head -n 3
Clear buffer/cache
sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
