SUMMARY: Disappeared memory

Thanks to:
Sydney Weinstein
Neill, Mark (MBS)
Martin hepworth
Justin Stringfellow
Perrier,Kent - PLANO
Schlaich, Florian
Jim Kerr
Daniel Nilsson
Sean Quaint
Martin =C5kesson

Original question:
> On one of our machines (E450, 4 x 256MHz CPU's, 4GB memory, Solaris 2.6=
>
  (105181-26)), it seems like a big chunk of our memory has disappeared. If
I=20
> use 'top' or 'glance' I'm told that there is about 65 MB free memory out
of=20
> a total of 4 GB, but if I issue the command=20
>=20
> ps -ef -o vsz =A6 awk '{mem +=3D $1} END {print mem/1024}'=20
>=20
> to sum up the memory used by each individual process, I get a figure like=
>
  2790 (MB) used. If I use -o rss instead of -o vsz, I obviously get an even

> smaller figure (about 2500 MB).=20
>=20
> Does anyone have any idea as to where 1.3 GB of memory could have gone all

> of a sudden? Or anything I could try to see if I can find it somewhere?=


T
 he answers seem in general to correspond with the first reply I got from
Sydney Weinstein:

> The memory you are seeking is being used
> 	minorly by the OS itself
> 	majorly by the file system code as a disk block cache.  All
> available memory eventually is used by the file system as disk block
> cache, its 'discard eligable' as other processes need memory.

This explains the system behaviour where there is lots of memory reported as
being free in 'top' or 'glance' after a reboot, but the free memory is
sucked up by the FS cache as the system does FS operations over time. I
suspected a memory leak, but couldn't find any. I suppose I can sleep a bit
more comfortable now :)

Cheers,
Thorfinn



The information in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privilege=
d. It is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended rec=
ipient please delete. Any views expressed in this message are those of the =
individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be t=
he views of STANDARD LONDON (ASIA), STANDARD NEW YORK SECURITIES INC STANDA=
RD BANK OFFSHORE GROUP Ltd or STANDARD BANK LONDON Ltd.

For Daily Market Updates visit our website at: http://www.standardbank.com