Memory not freed?

[Mike Bilow]

No, Linux basically uses space left over after paging in processes for
disk buffers.  This is a common approach.  It is quite dangerous to leave
dead applications sitting in memory, and I really doubt that Solaris does
it.  In fact, for security reasons, memory should generally be zeroed when
released, although that can incur a performance penalty.

-- Mike


On 2000-11-23 at 20:40 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> I can't answer this from the Linux standpoint, but many Unix systems do a 
> similar type of thing.
> I was just reading some documentation fo Linux paging algorithms. 
> Here is a link to a somewhat outdated document which can provide some 
> understanding.
> http://www.linuxdoc.org/LDP/khg/HyperNews/get/memory/linuxmm.html
> 
> Ken Gosier wrote:
> 
> > Question about the way Linux handles RAM:
> > 
> > Running top, I see that most of my RAM is in use (90/96 M used), even
> > though I only have a couple of terminals open. But, I just finished
> > running a scientific program that took up quite a lot of memory.
> > 
> > I read a blurb once from Sun about how Solaris will leave pages from
> > recently used applications in memory, and top will show them as in use.
> > Just in case you re-start the same app, it will start much faster this
> > time, since those pages are all ready to go.
> > 
> > Question: Does Linux do something similar?
> > 
> > Thnx--
> > Ken Gosier
> > ken_gosier at yahoo.com
> > kg293 at 110.net
> > 

-
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with
"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the
message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).