Available = "Free" (unused) + Cached

Available = "Free" (unused) + Cached

Posted Jun 13, 2006 6:30 UTC (Tue) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256)
In reply to: Memory footprint by JoeBuck
Parent article: Live CDs Part II: Desktop Replacements

I teach my students that the best, simplest approximation of their available memory is the "cached" *plus* "free" (which I translate to "unused" to better explain the meaning in top and the "free" command).

Yes, it's an simplication; but it's a useful one.

Then I teach them to watch the si and so (swap in and swap out) columns under vmstat for at least a couple minutes of sustained three digit values before declaring their system to be "out of memory."

JimD

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