[svlug] Need a good authoritative article.

[Chris Miller]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 9:14 PM, James Sparenberg <james at linuxrebel.org> wrote:
> All,
>
>    I fully understand why when I type free on a linux server at best no matter
>  how large the RAM total is, It shows only a few meg free.   I get this part.
>  However I've got a number of computer experts with degree's in Finance (long
>  story) who can't understand why a box with 8G of ram has only 14M free, or a
>  box with 48G of ram and a minimal install only has 172M free.  (obviously I
>  don't know how to configure Linux, and they can't offer any help on what I've
>  done wrong).
>
>    Since I don't have my Finance degree, I've learned it's impossible for me
>  to understand how memory usage works.  So what I'm looking for is a good
>  paper on this topic, probably one that will go so far over the "experts" head
>  that they won't be able to admit it, that covers this topic.
>
>   Any suggestions as to papers/websites etc that I can point my experts too?

I also thought that the manpage for free explained a bit of this, but
free isn't on my Cygwin install, and I don't feel like digging for my
laptop...  wait...

SSH to my webserver (this is so lame, using a webserver for manpages...)

Try the -o switch on free.  That should subtract the buffers and show
you how much is really being used.

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