High ram usage with new server installed

[Farner]

Hi
I've just installed Ubuntu 8.10 Server x86 on my newly installed server. I'm using it as a fileserver and router. The system I am running it on is:
AMD64 3500+
1GB DDR Ram
1TB HDD

I don't have much experiance with linux, altho I would suspect only connecting to the server with SSH and not running any programs would take alot less then 900MB of ram.

When I'm writing top this is how it looks like: top - 01:12:56 up 11 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.03
Mem: 1033400k total, 934644k used, 98756k free, 11312k buffers
Swap: 498004k total, 0k used, 498004k free, 862928k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
4446 mysql 20 0 124m 16m 4852 S 0.3 1.6 0:00.28 mysqld
1 root 20 0 3056 1888 564 S 0.0 0.2 0:01.25 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
46 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0
48 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 kblockd/0
50 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
51 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
156 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue
160 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
200 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
201 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
202 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0
244 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
1262 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd
1263 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
1288 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/0
1289 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_aux
1291 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khpsbpkt
2041 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 knodemgrd_0
2045 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
2046 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
2047 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_2
2048 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_3
2083 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 scsi_eh_4
2084 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 scsi_eh_5
2112 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_6
2113 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_7
2122 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_8
2123 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_9
2251 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kjournald

[spiderbatdad]

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/18990.html

The above article exlpains how linux uses free ram to cache the system disk for performance. Your memory is not all used up. As applications require ram, the ram is freed up for the applications. There is also a brief discission on how to set swappiness lower in /etc/sysctl.conf to make the system less likely to use swap...not necessarily good in server applications, but perhaps for desktops.

[blackened]

I would recommend using the free command to check total memory usage. Top is better for scrutinizing individual processes (though htop is even better for advanced sorting methods).

free -m

[Farner]

Thanks for the quick answer :)

Seems like I don't have to worry then :) cheerios