[Gllug] memory usage in linux

[Pavel Bradut Boghita]

On Tuesday 27 August 2002 11:39 pm, you wrote:
> On Tuesday, 27 Aug 2002, Pavel Bradut Boghita wrote:
> >I have been using linux for over a year, but only recently started to
> > learn more about the system as such. By running 'top' I've noticed that a
> > great deal of memory is being used.
>
> Linux aggressively caches disc pages in spare memory; once a disc page
> makes it into memory, there's little reason to move it out unless the
> memory is needed elsewhere. Hence, memory fills up and rarely empties,
> except immediately after a process using lots of memory is killed. The
> 'buff' number quoted by top is indicative of how much memory is so
> used (as opposed to being used as 'real' memory, IYSWIM); also, if the
> numbers in the SIZE and RSS column are similar or the same, that
> indicates little or no pressure on swap.

Thanks a lot for so much insight. This stuff is really interesting. I think I 
understood the bit about caching, but then.... where do I see how much memory 
is actually being used to keep the process running ? For example GIMP asks me 
how much memory am I going to allocate taking into account what other 
processes will use. How would I best allocate this memory ?

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