From: ming@minster.york.ac.uk Subject: "free" command in linux Date: 17 May 1993 11:19:29 GMT
I have installed SLS 1.01. There is a "free" utility which reports
how much free memory you are having and how much memory is left.
There is one thing I am curious about it. It also reports "buffers".
Since I cannot find man page for it, I assume that it is the number
of buffers the system is using.
The problem is that, when I first login, it reports about 890 buffers.
I then start a session with vi, quit it right away. Now I use free,
it reports over 1000 buffers! If I continue to use X11, I can get
something like 4000 buffers when I was in X11! And the unused memory
it reports is substantially less.
I am using a 486DX-33 with 16MB memory. Although I have so far not
ron out of memory, I would not think this is normal. The kernel is
recompiled (with no problem) to use tcp/ip, although at the moment
the machine is stand alone. Is there anybody knows what is going on
here?
Many thanks in advance.
Ming