On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:51 am, Terry Denovan wrote: > Hi Sluggers, > > I had a little issue with squid 2.5Stable1 using a lot of memory, I have > since cleared and rebuilt squid and everything seems to be running > smoothly again... Im just wondering, when I run "top" it shows the > memory used at 476232k, is that right, or is something using the memory > that shouldn't be...
I've always found it odd that a lot of people worry when their operating
system uses memory. You paid for - why not let the system use it? ;)
Linux and most other "real" operating systems will take advantage of
"unused" RAM and allocate it for disk buffers and disk cache. This is a
good thing! The kernel will free up buffers and/or cache as it deems
appropriate if an application needs the space. To the end user (or system
admin) the whole process is completely transparent and very fast.
As your applications chew up RAM, very little will used for buffer and cache
(as the apps are using it). When the apps fill the RAM or even exceed it,
swap comes into play (and buffer+cache will be very small % of total RAM).
Swapping (paging) is bad coz it's slooooooow. RAM is many orders of
magnitude faster than even the fastest disks so if your system is paging
like mad, buy more RAM. If your system is all whiz-bang fast and never
pages, then relax and let the kernel be happy doing its thing :)
James
--
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
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