On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Michael Rubin wrote: > If my computer shows 500 mgs allocated to /dev/shm, does that mean that > it's actually using that memory, or it will try to allocate it if I
No, /dev/shm is a virtual file system, formatted with tmpfs (similar to a ramdisk). I'm not entirely sure what processes use this space, though. Systems which use it allocate 1/2 the RAM to /dev/shm by default, but the size can be smaller or larger, up to the value of RAM + SWAP. Treat it as a sparse file: it only consumes as much RAM as it does data (give or take a little file system overhead), regardless of how much is actually allocated. top, procinfo, or free will give you more useful data about how much RAM is currently in use. Of course, having no free RAM isn't necessarily bad, either...a lot of times, the free space is taken up by cache or buffers, and will be given to applications that need it. The real test is how much swap you're using. Linux swaps aggressively, even if you aren't really out of RAM. But if your swap is always full, and your drives are thrashing, it's a clear indication that you've exceeded your reasonable limits. -- "Of course I'm in shape! Round's a shape, isn't it?" -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
