Memory staying in cached status -- Possible Memory Leak

[Scott van Looy]

On Oct 25 Dave Mitchell did spake thusly:

> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 10:31:23AM -0400, Kaplan, Andrew H. wrote:
>> I am running Fedora Core 5 that was hardened by Bastille Linux on a system with
>> 1.5 GB of RAM. The system functions as an e-mail server running Sendmail along
>> with MailScanner, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV.
>>
>> I have noticed over time, via the free -m command, that the amount of cached RAM
>> is going up. This results in the amount of free memory going down to where there
>> is almost nothing left.
>
> That's normal behaviour. The OS uses unused RAM to cache disk access. When it
> needs to use the RAM for something "proper", it just reclaims it.
>
> As long as the -/+ buffers/cache line shows lots free, you're ok.
>
>> The end result has been the system to periodically
>> hanging, which forces me to reboot the server.
>
> Your fault most likely lies elsewhere.

Somebody told me yesterday that the "free" column should be kept as close 
to 0 as possible by the linux kernel. Is this true? Coz mine ain't...

-- 
Scott van Looy - email:me at ethosuk.org.uk | web:www.ethosuk.org.uk
site:www.freakcity.net - the in place for outcasts since 2003
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