Finding out memory usage on Linux

Since having my own server I'm becoming a little OCD on memory usage.

There are two tools I have been using which are

1. Top:
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     ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore. Source code and license information available at coldfish.riaforge.org
   $ top 1$ top
   
   Once its loaded press shift-m to sort by memory. You can read more here
2. Free
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     ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore. Source code and license information available at coldfish.riaforge.org
   $ Free -m 1$ Free -m
   
   This is a high level view of whats being used and whats free. You can read more about this here. Don't worry about the first line of output here its always close as Linux automatically uses all the RAM you've got for caching etc. The second line is usage without counting the OS-internal buffers and cache and is the "real" RAM utilization. * (Thanks to Barney Boisvert for his help on better understanding these :))

Posted: 24-Apr-2009

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Comments

If you want a prettier version of "top" you can use "htop". Still console based, but a bit nicer :o)

#1 James Marshall
24/Apr/09 5:42 PM