[svlug] Need a good authoritative article.

[James Sparenberg]

Oh I've shown my experts the output of free.  However they still contend that 
our applications are slowed down because Linux is taking up all the ram (mind 
you the apps are running faster than ever before since I started tweaking the 
FS, also never mind that Windows OSX and Solaris do the same on other 
systems)   One must be aware that I'm dealing with experts, this has nothing 
to do with knowledge.  

These are the kinds of people who would argue with Knuth about the art of 
programming. ;)

James

On Friday 28 March 2008 14:04:00 Chris Miller wrote:
> 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.