Critical Memory

Question

Possible Duplicate:
free: output format

My Redhat server shows the following:

free -m 
============= 
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached 
Mem:          8113       8078        35          0        171       6491   
-/+ buffers/cache:       1415       6698   
Swap:         8189         59       8130

Is 35 mega of free memory considered critical on a production server ?

Nothing to be worried about - see http://serverfault.com/a/379392 for more details. — Ulrich Dangel, Jun 29 '12 at 07:45

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 29 '12 at 19:02

Ulrich gave you two links that go into detail, which are correct.

Here's the TL;DR version.

Add free and cache. That's how much RAM is available to any application that wants to use it. (In your case, about 6.5GB out of 8GB total).

If you want to know more more, read those links from Ulrich.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 29 '12 at 12:44

0

How long is piece of string?

Whether it's bad depends what your server is doing. For a SMTP relay, a Java Application server or a MySQL DBMS server running exclusvely innoDB tables it's not a problem. For a lot of other applications, it will have a dire effect on performance. You didn't say what the box is used for.

answered Jun 29 '12 at 12:44

symcbean

5,540

usually half as long as I need, and almost as long as a piece of chalk. – lornix Jun 30 '12 at 08:22

Critical Memory

2 Answers2