[ale] Can anyone help with an understanding

[jknapka at earthlink.net (Joseph A Knapka)]

"Robert L. Harris" wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to track down what I think might be a memory leak in a RedHat
> 6.0 and PHP4 setup.  No upgrading isn't a possibility yet, but if I'm
> right we'll likely be doing a project plan.
> 
> At any rate I'm seeing this while the system is running.

<vmstat output snipped>
 
>  0  0  0   1116 271072  56908  82836   0   0     0     0  214   281   0 1  99
> 
> Very slowly memory is just being eaten away.

No, it's being cached. This is perfectly normal and
nothing to worry about. Basically, free memory is
wasted memory; Linux caches as much data as it
can in order to more-quickly service page faults.
Any memory that shows up in the "Cached" column
in vmstat can be considered free for practical
purposes, since the kernel will reclaim those
pages for use elsewhere when necessary.

Cheers,

-- Joe
  Using open-source software: free.
  Pissing Bill Gates off: priceless.

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