Free Memory by dropping caches
To use /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches, just echo a number to it.
To free pagecache: Freeing
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
To free dentries and inodes:
# echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:
# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, run sync first!
Here are the before and after results from my desktop:
# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2074840 1656052 418788 0 140108 907920 -/+ buffers/cache: 608024 1466816 Swap: 3911816 76436 3835380 # sync ; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches ; free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2074840 698472 1376368 0 268 126488 -/+ buffers/cache: 571716 1503124 Swap: 3911816 76436 3835380
Thanks to http://linux-mm.org http://feeds.feedburner.com/rameshr
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