2011/5/4 Chuck Munro <[log in to unmask]>

The information there looks about correct. I get different output from
`free`, however:
           total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       3843684    3622932     220752          0      85184    995880
-/+ buffers/cache:    2541868    1301816
Swap:      6289412    1258920    5030492

Here, the second line without buffers and cache is interesting.

When using `top`, look at the RES column and for some applications that
make usage of shared memory, the SHR column. The link you provided
completely ignores that but in some cases, this usage can be significant.


Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp

One thing I'd like to add to Florian's comment ... If you have not yet tried it, install a copy of 'htop' from Dag Wieers' SourceForge repository.  There is an el6 version of the repo configuration rpm available at:  packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/

'htop' is an excellent tool for poking around processes, and allows you to scroll vertically *and* horizontally through the process list.  I much prefer it to traditional 'top'.

Chuck