[mythtv-users] 64 Bit and memory

[Erik Sejr]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:23:43 -0500, Richard Freeman
<r-mythtv at gw.thefreemanclan.net> wrote:
> Marc wrote:
>> I'm running a SVN(15354) frontend/backend on Gentoo with 32 bits and I'm
> not
>> seeing this problem.
>> asgard ~ # free -m
>  > snip...
> 
> I just noticed these posts.  If you're concerned about memory leaks / 
> etc looking at the output of free is just about useless.  Look at how 
> much memory individual processes are taking up instead.
> 
> It is completely normal for a linux system with 500GB of memory and at 
> least as much hard drive space to swap to disk, and report most of the 
> memory as in use just about all the time.
> 
> The reason memory seems to be always in-use is that "free" memory in 
> linux is memory that is not being used AT ALL for any purpose.  Linux 
> tries to minimize the amount of completely-unused memory - preferring to 
> use it for buffering or cache.  When the memory is needed the cache is 
> purged and the buffers are flushed.  This only improves system 
> performance by reducing disk access.  If memory isn't needed for 
> something else you might as well use it as cache - it doesn't cost 
> anything as cache can be instantly purged to be made available.
> 
snip...

I upgraded to SVN Revsion 15043 and I am no longer having this memory
issue. Whatever it was, it seems to have been fixed.