RE: Kernel cached memory

John Pearson
2005-07-22T21:47:55Z

Wouldn't having (practically) all your memory used for cache slow down
starting a new program? First it would have to free up that space, and then
put stuff in that space, taking potentially twice as long. I think there
should be a system call for freeing cached memory, for those that do want to
do it.

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
[mailto:linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org]On Behalf Of Erik Mouw
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2005 5:58 AM
To: Ashley
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Kernel cached memory

On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 05:46:58PM +0800, Ashley wrote:
> I've a server with 2 Operton 64bit CPU and 12G memory, and this server
> is used to run applications which will comsume huge memory,
> the problem is: when this aplications exits, the free memory of the
server
> is still very low(accroding to the output of "top"), and
> from the output of command "free", I can see that many GB memory was
cached
> by kernel. Does anyone know how to free the kernel cached
> memory? thanks in advance.

Free memory is bad, it means the memory doesn't have a proper use.
Cached memory will be freed automatically when the kernel needs memory
for other (more important) things.

Erik

--
+-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 --
| Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands
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