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Ubuntu server RAM usage
Hi,
Sorry if this sounds as a "noob" question but I'm not totally familiar how Ubuntu allocates RAM. Been a Windows guy most of my life.
I got an 16GB server from SyS and been running an snapcraft application on it with an total server uptime of 70 days+/- a few.
Now, last I checked the softwares admin panel it's showing me "OS free memory - 6.2GB"
Does that sound alright? Is Ubuntu somehow caching the memory or something?
Comments
Without more info, it's hard to say what it is exactly. Most likely it's just caching. https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
Ah, never knew about that site, thanks!
I've tried some console commands that I found on Stack (which are not the best practice as they said themselves) to "free" that RAM and it does go up in the admin panel for a day or two and then all the way back to 5-6GB
Would you rather have your RAM doing nothing, or improve system response? Go Google Linux RAM allocation.. Looks like you have an over-specced server there.
Forget about Windoze - it just gave you a dumbing down experience.
Yeah of course it's better if it's used to speed things up.
Just checked the free -m and it's showing me 14gigs available. Think you're right on the overkill lol. Then again better to be over specced than under specced at some point I guess.
Linux memory management is so bad and full of memory leaks, you basically need to open the lid and shove additional ram sticks in the machine as it's working. It's based on the Nintendo cartridges.
Nah i'm kidding, it's due to filesystem buffers, the kernel caches to ram, it's totally okay.
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; sync; sync; sync
to drop caches.
Check all running processes and find process which using high RAM and check their default consumption. If its not normal you may need some tweaking depending on process.
Run every minute with a cron task.
This is a bit silly though. If you've got lots of free RAM, why not use it for caching? RAM is faster than disk (even with SSDs) and you may as well use all the RAM you have. Linux will automatically purge items from the cache if apps actually request the RAM, you don't need to mess with it manually.
The purpose here is to free RAM.
Also it is far from silly for that purpose.
EDIT:
Removed.
Sure, but my point is that you don't need to free RAM yourself- The kernel will do that for you when the RAM is needed. As long as it appears as "available" in
free -m, you're fine. While you don't need it, let it do its thing with cachingNo.
RAMLIVESMATTER.
FreeRAM. FreeRAMMMM!
FreeWSS
Just for clarity: the only time that you really need to drop caches, is when resizing/switching/re-prioritising swap, IMHO.
Some people just don't get "tongue-in-cheek".