Re: 'free' and 'top' show the wrong amount of RAM


Subject: Re: 'free' and 'top' show the wrong amount of RAM
From: Jim Cole (greyleaf@yggdrasill.net)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 22:20:45 MST


Jason P. Stanford's bits of Fri, 3 Mar 2000 translated to:

>Disk : 1,000 * 1024 bytes = 1,024,000 bytes =~ 1MB
>Memory : 2^20 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes =~ 1MB RAM
>
>One megabyte of disk storage is comprised of 1,000 units of 1,024 bytes,
>whereas one megabyte of memory (RAM) is comprised of 2^20 bytes.

I would have to disagree. 1000 units of 1024 bytes is just 1000 1KB blocks,
not 1 MB. A MB is always 1024^2 bytes. If you check the man pages for du
and df, they at least agree with me ;) Both equate the -m (--megabytes)
option with --blocksize=1048576.

I am 99.9% certain that *missing memory* issue that started all of this
is due to the fact that free and top on a monolithic Linux kernel report
the remaining memory available for daemons, user programs, etc. after
the kernel has been loaded up.

Jim



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