From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262202AbVGVVrz (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:47:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262195AbVGVVp3 (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:45:29 -0400 Received: from [64.34.38.30] ([64.34.38.30]:950 "EHLO mercury.illhostit.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262198AbVGVVnp (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:43:45 -0400 From: "John Pearson" To: "Erik Mouw" , "Ashley" Cc: Subject: RE: Kernel cached memory Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 14:43:43 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <20050722125746.GG20258@harddisk-recovery.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Importance: Normal X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - mercury.illhostit.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - vger.kernel.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [0 0] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - illhostit.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Wouldn't having (practically) all your memory used for cache slow down starting a new program? First it would have to free up that space, and then put stuff in that space, taking potentially twice as long. I think there should be a system call for freeing cached memory, for those that do want to do it. -----Original Message----- From: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org]On Behalf Of Erik Mouw Sent: Friday, July 22, 2005 5:58 AM To: Ashley Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Kernel cached memory On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 05:46:58PM +0800, Ashley wrote: > I've a server with 2 Operton 64bit CPU and 12G memory, and this server > is used to run applications which will comsume huge memory, > the problem is: when this aplications exits, the free memory of the server > is still very low(accroding to the output of "top"), and > from the output of command "free", I can see that many GB memory was cached > by kernel. Does anyone know how to free the kernel cached > memory? thanks in advance. Free memory is bad, it means the memory doesn't have a proper use. Cached memory will be freed automatically when the kernel needs memory for other (more important) things. Erik -- +-- Erik Mouw -- www.harddisk-recovery.com -- +31 70 370 12 90 -- | Lab address: Delftechpark 26, 2628 XH, Delft, The Netherlands - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/