On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 23:57 +0100, Joshua C. wrote: > I have kde 4.2 and f9. After 2+ hours on my computer it has about > 1,4GB cached memory. I don't see him releasing this memory after time. > I know it comes from the apps being open but it seems the kernel > "never" releases the memory after the app terminates. How to make the > kernel free this memory? I've seen similar cases with kde 3.5.10 and > f8 and f7. I know kde eats memory but this is too much. Who caches so > much of it? Why? > > The mashine has 2,6 GB RAM (still x86) and 512mb swap which is rarely > used (~ 50mb at most) and combined cached + app memory totals about 2 > gb. Hi Joshua, Memory is being used for cache basically because it's not being used for anything else. The kernel will gladly use that memory for other purposes when it's needed -- but until then, there's no harm in keeping disk data around in otherwise-unused memory just in case it's needed later. This is why the "free" command shows a "-/+ buffers/cache" line, which shows you what the memory picture is without the cache (i.e., the memory that is truly available when needed): $ free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 4061388 3796632 264756 0 259244 570224 -/+ buffers/cache: 2967164 1094224 Swap: 4194296 2092276 2102020 -Chris -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list