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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Reduce memory usage on Ubuntu server 9.04?

garton
June 20th, 2009, 02:52 PM
I have a fresh install of an Ubuntu server 9.04. No GUI, just text-based login. This is the output from "free":

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 508828 311116 197712 0 108060 162892
-/+ buffers/cache: 40164 468664
Swap: 875500 0 875500

300MB of allocated RAM on a system that does nothing seems a bit much to me. Is there a way to reduce this?
philcamlin
June 20th, 2009, 02:55 PM
what do you mean its doing nothing its doing alot of things like it has your apache thats ubing up memory or lamp or whatever

same with any os itll always use up memory :popcorn:

no matter what your doing
zekica
June 20th, 2009, 03:01 PM
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 508828 311116 197712 0 108060 162892
-/+ buffers/cache: 40164 468664
Swap: 875500 0 875500


The last column (cached) displays how much of your used memory is in fact disk cache, so your system should be able to free a lot of that when it needs more memory. So, in your case, your actual used memory is a little above 150MB.
garton
June 20th, 2009, 03:04 PM
I just realized that I installed ubuntu-virt-server during the installation! That's becuase I was going to run virtualbox on this machine.

Now I realize that virtualbox may not be using ubuntu-virt-server at all. That's going to go then, and I'll see if that reduces RAM usage.
garton
June 20th, 2009, 03:05 PM
what do you mean its doing nothing its doing alot of things like it has your apache thats ubing up memory or lamp or whatever

same with any os itll always use up memory :popcorn:

no matter what your doing

I know that. But an OpenSUSE box with no X idles at about 5MB. So the question in this thread was; why is an Ubuntu server idling at 300MB?!
garton
June 20th, 2009, 03:15 PM
I just realized that I installed ubuntu-virt-server during the installation! That's becuase I was going to run virtualbox on this machine.

Now I realize that virtualbox may not be using ubuntu-virt-server at all. That's going to go then, and I'll see if that reduces RAM usage.

Right... that reduced memory usage with 200MB.

Sorry for starting a thread without checking this first.