Linux Question

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 09:46:06AM -0500, Edwin Zoeller wrote:
>    Other admins here are disputing the results and claim that Linux
>    buffers all the memory and gives what it needs. I don't know for
>    fact it this is true. I have also run top, free and ps -eo checking
>    on memory size, all give back the same results as the Nagios
>    plugin. Is this plugin with the option chosen giving real memory
>    results or bogus results.

I can't speak to the last question, but the first one is in fact true:

Here's my laptop:
	     
$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2075116    1924264     150852          0       1360    1651460
-/+ buffers/cache:     271444    1803672
Swap:      1052216          0    1052216
$

Note that not much is free, but lots is cached.  And that nothing is
swapped.

IMO, that's the most useful number to measure: most machines will reach
a steadystate where there is 0 or very little (a few tens of megabytes)
of active swap.

If your swap starts to climb, that's when *I* worry...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com                     '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274

	     Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
	     Those who count the vote decide everything.
	       -- (Josef Stalin)

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