Dear list members, I have a question about Linux page cache. I create a 10MB file using following application code: int fd=open("foo.txt", O_CREAT|O_RDWR|O_SYNC); char* content=(char *)malloc(1024*1024*10); write(fd, content, 1024*1024*10); free(content); close(fd); Immediately before and after this code execution, command "free -m" shows free memory decreased by 10M and cache incresed by 10M. If I delete foo.txt, then free memory increases by 10M and cache decreases by 10M. My question is why the cache is growing even after O_SYNC flag? Even fsync does not help. But deleting file freeing the cache. Is there any way to free cache? I am using RHEL3 (2.4.21-40 kernel) and /proc/sys/vm/ has following configuration: /proc/sys/vm/bdflush:50 500 0 0 500 3000 80 50 0 /proc/sys/vm/dcache_priority:0 /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_pool:0 /proc/sys/vm/inactive_clean_percent:30 /proc/sys/vm/kscand_work_percent:100 /proc/sys/vm/kswapd:512 32 8 /proc/sys/vm/max-readahead:31 /proc/sys/vm/max_map_count:65536 /proc/sys/vm/min-readahead:3 /proc/sys/vm/oom-kill:1 /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory:0 /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_ratio:50 /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster:3 /proc/sys/vm/pagecache:1 15 30 /proc/sys/vm/pagetable_cache:25 50 /proc/sys/vm/skip_mapped_pages:0 /proc/sys/vm/stack_defer_threshold:2048 /proc/sys/vm/vm-defragment:0 Thanks Lal -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ