Linux Debian memory leak?

Question

I am running an application which needs to be restarted everyday. I am noticing that when I close this application and I run "free -m" It says:

          total       used       free      shared       buffers        cached 
Mem:      1009        863        146       0            16             815

-/+ buffers/cache:    31         978
Swap:     0           0          0

How come I only have 146mb free? It is the only application I am running and when I restart the whole system I have 980mb free.

http://serverfault.com/questions/85470/meaning-of-the-buffers-cache-line-in-the-output-of-free — onur, Feb 19 '15 at 15:27
You actually have 978 MB free. It is normal that the system will fill up the cache. — goldilocks, Feb 19 '15 at 16:04

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 19 '19 at 05:39

Do not panic, all is fine. Here is explanation why:

Excerpt:

To see how much ram is free to use for your applications, run free -m and look at the row that says "-/+ buffers/cache" in the column that says "free". That is your answer in megabytes:

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1504       1491         13          0         91        764
-/+ buffers/cache:        635        869
Swap:         2047          6       2041

Linux Debian memory leak?

1 Answers1