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Savvas Ladopoulos wrote:
Dear all,
I have installed Suse 9.0 in two pcs. 1. A Pentium III with 256 MB of RAM. 2. A AMD 3200 with 1024 MB of RAM.
Both have the same problem.
Using top can see that used memory increases by 4-20kb every 1-2 secs and free is reduced by that amount. Further buffer size increases. Eventually all physical and swap is used and if unlucky will Hung too!
Has anybody came across the same problem and if so what is set so wrong? Why buffer size increases all time ?
Thank You, Savvas
If the system is hanging/crashing or swap is being used up, there is some problem, but unlikely related to the buffer observations. Normally the OS (specifically the kernel) takes up 'spare' RAM for I/O or other buffers. This memory is instantly and transparently released when another process needs RAM. This is done for performance reasons & is beneficial, thought it is alarming to see top reporting all of your RAM 'used up' when nothing is happening. My 933 PIII, with 1 GB of RAM, normally has about 650 MB of RAM taken up by buffers & the rest free, though if something else needs RAM, it becomes available or shows up as used by that other process. If your box is showing swap being used up (mine is normally at 0k), then top should also show what is using up the RAM & you can investigate that. HTH, YMMV, & all that.