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


Subject: Re: 'free' and 'top' show the wrong amount of RAM
From: Jason Stanford (Jason.Stanford@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 23:22:14 MST


You are likely right. I shall read over the old messages tomorrow whilst
actually awake! :)

Jim Cole wrote:
>
> 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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