Re: Linux TOP

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
>> In this:
>>
>> Mem:  16432240k total, 16344596k used,    87644k free,    27548k buffers
>> Swap: 10241428k total,  3680860k used,  6560568k free,  6230376k cached
>>
>> The 6.2G cached is considered part of the 16G used
>>
>> So it's not using more memory than it has.  It's just the accounting
>> is inobvious.
>
> This is a snapshot.  The fact that 3.7GB of swap is used here suggests there
> may have been more memory used at some point in the past then we're seeing
> now; that's more what I was commenting on.  A look at the si/so figures in
> vmstat should nail down whether that's still going on or not now, as Tom
> already suggested.

Definitely.  not arguing the guy doesn't have problems, just that the
way top accounts for memory is rather misleading for most folks.