memory usage

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

Essentially, yes. The Unix/Linux kernel has been using buffers forever. 
This is one of the reasons that Unix/Linux file systems don't fragment 
nearly as much. It also reduces the amount of I/O. The system maintains 
things like inode tables in memory. The caching is non-standard, and is 
different across different Unix systems.
On 2 May 2002 at 11:31, Drew Taylor wrote:

> So buffers are essentially very fast I/O used by the kernel to speed things 
> up. This is the "buffers" from /proc/meminfo. Then is the "cached" value 
> I/O that has been cached in RAM by the kernel for possible future use? If 
> so, then that explains why my cached value is constantly growing/shrinking 
> while I stream MP3's from home via Apache::MP3 here to work.

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
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