Subject: Re: 'free' and 'top' show the wrong amount of RAM
From: Jim Cole (greyleaf@yggdrasill.net)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 20:17:45 MST
Hi - top and free display the total *available* memory, not the total
physical memory. Memory used by the kernel (and possibly some other
low level stuff) is not considered to be available by either of these
programs. This probably accounts for what you are seeing.
Jim
Robert Fout's bits of Thu, 2 Mar 2000 translated to:
>okay, i know everyone is excited about 1.2 coming out, but this is just
>something I'm curious about: why 'free' and 'top' show the incorrect about
>of RAM being in my machine (B&W G3/400 rev. 2)
>
>[rfout@bigblue rfout]$ free
> total used free shared buffers cached
>Mem: 127312 24844 102468 16608 940 14880
>-/+ buffers/cache: 9024 118288
>Swap: 131096 0 131096
>
>I have 128 of RAM, and 128 MB of swap (the amount of swap is shown okay, but
>not RAM)
>
>127312/1024=124.328125
>
>I used RHL 6.1 a PIII/500 at school (with 64 MB of RAM) and 'free' on those
>machines showed them as having ‰62 MB of RAM.
>
>Using
>
>What the heck is causing this.. is the ROM being stored in RAM... but that
>wouldn't make sense on the PC?
>
>Bob
>
>---------------------------------------
>"The knack to flying is learning how to
>throw yourself at the ground and miss."
>
>>>From "Life the Universe and Everything"
>by Douglas Adams
>
>Robert Fout
>MacOS Guru and MkLinux/Yellowdog Linux User
>rfout@damien.edu
>http://osx.damien.edu/rfout/
>ICQ# 48433406
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun Apr 02 2000 - 21:09:29 MDT