From: Steve Bergman <sbergman@rueb.com>
To: Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Free memory level in 2.6.16?
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:48:47 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1160034527.23009.7.camel@localhost> (raw)
Due to some problems I was having with the CentOS4.4 kernel, I just
moved a box (x86 with 4GB ram) to 2.6.16.29 from kernel.org.
All is well, but I am curious about one thing. This is a fairly memory
hungry box, serving about 40 gnome desktops via xdmcp. All VM settings
are at the default. Swappiness=60, min_free_kbytes=3831.
However, it seems to seek out about 150MB for the level of free memory
that it maintains. Typically I see somewhere between 100MB an 500MB in
swap, buffers+cache is about 500MB, and 150MB is free.
If I cat from /dev/md0 to /dev/null, the free memory does go down, to
25MB or so, but then I can watch as it seeks out about 150MB of free
memory.
To me, free memory is wasted memory. Is this a bug or a feature?
Thanks for any enlightenment.
next reply other threads:[~2006-10-05 7:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2006-10-05 7:48 Steve Bergman [this message]
2006-10-05 20:01 ` Free memory level in 2.6.16? Andi Kleen
2006-10-05 20:10 ` Steve Bergman
2006-10-05 20:17 ` Andi Kleen
2006-10-05 20:41 ` Steve Bergman
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