From: amylaar@meolyon.hanse.de (Joern Rennecke) Subject: Re: cache size Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 05:44:01 GMT
drew@caesar.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) writes:
>In article <1993Mar23.172002.8032@camaro.uucp> las@camaro.uucp (Laszlo Herczeg) writes:
>>Greetings,
>> I am runnig 0.98 p1 with 4 Meg, and free informs me that I have 2 Megs
>>tied up in the cache.
>>
>>Now, I wonder if there is a way to reconfigure that memory (or part of it)
>>for user processes. Perhaps the kernel itself handles this when demand for
>>the tied up memory arises?
>This is correct - essentially, Linux uses all free memory for buffer
>cache.
No. After startup, the buffer caches fill on by computer till the 6144 KB 1)
limit, then stay the same. Even if there are 8 MB free RAM and some disk
activity goes on.
1) Well, when I compile something really big under X, or use ed on a file
beyond 8 MB, the the buffer size might decrease, maybe some swap gets
used then too.
Joern Rennecke