memory problem

[Andy Green]

Tom Spec wrote:
> Try this for top 15 memory using processes (in % terms), all on one line...
> 
> ps aux | head -n 1 | cut -c 1-100; ps aux | sort -n -r -k 4 | grep -v 
> COMMAND | head -n 15

I think the "problem" is just that the free RAM is accounted for as 
being disc cache.  Try

# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        30120 kB
MemFree:          2664 kB
Buffers:          1332 kB
Cached:           6804 kB
...

On this box with 32MB of RAM for example, although it only reports 2.6MB 
free, in fact 6.8MB is in use as disc cache and can be called upon as if 
it was free: really 9.4MB is "free".  I think Waleed might find a 
similar situation on his server, in which case that currently unused 
memory is already "optimized" and there is no memory crunch.

-Andy