Linux has a supposedly good memory management feature that will use up any "extra" RAM you have to cache stuff. This section of the memory being used is SUPPOSED to be freely available to be taken over by any other process that actually needs it, but unfortunately Linux thinks that cache memory is too important to move over for anything else that actually needs it.
I noticed that whenever the server is booted, everything runs great. But as soon as it fills up with cache, performance degrades. It's terrible..
Up until just now, I have been forced to restart every time this happens because I simply cannot get any work done while in this state of retardation. I can close every single program I'm running - and even then, simply right clicking would require some extended thinking before loading the context menu. Ridiculous.
What consumes System Memory?
The kernel - The kernel will consume a couple of MB of memory. The memory that the kernel consumes can not be swapped out to disk. This memory is not reported by commands such as "free" or "ps".
Running programs - Programs that have been executed will consume memory while they run.
Memory Buffers - The amount of memory used is managed by the kernel. You can get the amount with "free".
Memory Cached - The amount of memory used is managed by the kernel. You can get the amount with "free".
Cached memory is freed on demand by the kernel.... it's done this way to make your system more responsive. Trust Linus Torvalds, he knows what he's doing.
There are few ways to check memory usage in Linux. By using the commands like free, vmstat and ps you will be able to check your linux memory usage:-
# free
The 'free -m' command displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory in the system, as well as the buffers used by the kernel.
Output:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1033612 354636 678976 0 240 201508
-/+ buffers/cache: 152888 880724
Swap: 1967952 0 1967952
You can also ask free to display results in every 5 seconds, in order to track the increases/decreases on memory usage.
# free -s 5
# vmstat
The vmstat command reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, and cpu activity.
Output:
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
1 0 0 131620 35432 341496 0 0 42 82 737 1364 15 3 81 1
# ps
The command "ps" is a c program that reads the "/proc" filesystem.
There are two elements that are useful when determining the per process memory usage.
They are:
a. RSS
b. VSIZE
Per Process Memory Usage
The inputs to this section were obtained with the command:
# ps -eo pid,ppid,rss,vsize,pcpu,pmem,cmd -ww --sort=pid
Luckily, I found a way to clear out the cache being used. Simply run the following command as root and the cache will be cleared out.
Linux Command :
# sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
The main point "Don't Panic! Your ram is fine!" is absolutely correct.
The Linux disk cache is very unobtrusive. It uses spare memory to greatly increase disk access speeds, and without taking any memory away from applications. A fully used store of ram on Linux is efficient hardware use, not a warning sign.
