From: Tim Boyer 

On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 16:09:22 -0800, Randall Parker

wrote:

>After learning about the ability to cat /proc/bus/usb/devices and see
>lots of info about USB devices on one's machine I got to poking around
>the whole /proc scene. See below.
>
>Why is MemFree so low? I have 1 gig. VmallocTotal is about a tenth of
>that. Also, doing
>   > ps aux
>  reports that FireFox is using 8.6% of the total, Thunderbird 4.1%,
>/usr/bin/X is using 3.6%, Seamonkey 2.7%, and everthing else is less
>than 2% each. So what is the memory assigned to?
>

Cache and buffers.

You _want_ memory to be low.  It's like CPU.  What is the ideal CPU usage
number?  99.9%, right?  Anything less, and you've got more CPU than you
need. Anything more, and you don't have enough.  99.9%, that means you're
using all you've got.

Same thing with memory.  If it's not being used for program space, it
should be used to buffer stuff up.  Why let it sit there idle?

--
tim boyer
tim{at}denmantire.com

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