Cluttermagnet Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Hi, all- I just got a reminder email from an Ebay seller where I got another 4GB of DDR 1G/400 RAM. He wants, and deserves, his positive feedback. I had socketed 2 out of 4 sticks I got from him. Today, I checked the other two sticks and all seems OK with them. Linux reports various sizes of RAM such as 3.3G, 3.475G, and 3.57G. Depends on which utility is doing the reporting. I strongly suspect this is completely normal behavior- OTOH I would more expect this if I were running Win7, not so much for Linux. Anyway, what do you all think? Some portion of RAM is obviously being reserved for- something. I do know BTW there is a ~4GB RAM limit unless one goes to 64 bit OS and architecture, then it is 8GB (?). Comments? Thanks, Clutter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Most accurate way to check RAM in Linux... vtel57@ericsbane06~:$ free -t total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 4046428 3120152 926276 0 122108 1050864 -/+ buffers/cache: 1947180 2099248 Swap: 3132412 0 3132412 Total: 7178840 3120152 4058688 $ man free Have fun. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Actually the 32bit ram limit is 3.5gb unless you use a PAE kernel. Anything higher than that requires a 64bit installation. If your machine can do 64bit, then there is no reason not to run it. There are a lot of benefits of running 64bit over 32bit including gain in performance, using over 3.5gb of ram, parallel processing, faster bus, more secure due to buffer overflow protection, etc. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Standard 32 bit kernel will only see ~4GB RAM. Use a PAE kernel if you have more. Snap, SB. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 You can also run: cat /proc/meminfo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Yes. You get more details with the cat /proc/meminfo command: vtel57@ericsbane06~:$ cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 4046428 kB MemFree: 758264 kB Buffers: 124656 kB Cached: 1059664 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 2200848 kB Inactive: 848760 kB Active(anon): 1826380 kB Inactive(anon): 71724 kB Active(file): 374468 kB Inactive(file): 777036 kB Unevictable: 16 kB Mlocked: 16 kB SwapTotal: 3132412 kB SwapFree: 3132412 kB Dirty: 64 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 1865332 kB Mapped: 255872 kB Shmem: 32812 kB Slab: 104624 kB SReclaimable: 80448 kB SUnreclaim: 24176 kB KernelStack: 4008 kB PageTables: 37704 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 5155624 kB Committed_AS: 4927680 kB VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB VmallocUsed: 320956 kB VmallocChunk: 34359390716 kB AnonHugePages: 555008 kB DirectMap4k: 134784 kB DirectMap2M: 4059136 kB DirectMap1G: 0 kB However, usually you're only concerned with Free, Used, Cached, Swap. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 (edited) Thanks, Guys- Well, both commands report 3,475,768 total memory. That's with 4 RAM slots populated with 4 DDR 1G/400 RAM sticks. I'm now even more sure all is OK, based on your comments. This is 32 bit architecture and OS here (Mint 17 Mate). So I give the guy his positive feedback; I am pretty sure I received four good RAM sticks from him. Not that I've run that RAMtest utility on them. I don't often run that. Guess I should... Shoelaces untied? All I see are penny slots down there... Oh, OK- here is the short version... clutter@clutter-MS-6728 ~ $ free -t total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3475768 1332592 2143176 11704 94620 607100 -/+ buffers/cache: 630872 2844896 Swap: 1183740 0 1183740 Total: 4659508 1332592 3326916 clutter@clutter-MS-6728 ~ $ Joe in Accounting gave me the long version. Says I have 48K 'dirty'. Huh? clutter@clutter-MS-6728 ~ $ cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 3475768 kB MemFree: 2139028 kB Buffers: 94664 kB Cached: 607340 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 739980 kB Inactive: 478460 kB Active(anon): 517348 kB Inactive(anon): 11008 kB Active(file): 222632 kB Inactive(file): 467452 kB Unevictable: 0 kB Mlocked: 0 kB HighTotal: 2609160 kB HighFree: 1663140 kB LowTotal: 866608 kB LowFree: 475888 kB SwapTotal: 1183740 kB SwapFree: 1183740 kB Dirty: 48 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 516428 kB Mapped: 96640 kB Shmem: 11928 kB Slab: 32488 kB SReclaimable: 21520 kB SUnreclaim: 10968 kB KernelStack: 2672 kB PageTables: 6520 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 2921624 kB Committed_AS: 2020388 kB VmallocTotal: 122880 kB VmallocUsed: 11520 kB VmallocChunk: 102156 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB AnonHugePages: 102400 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 2048 kB DirectMap4k: 92152 kB DirectMap2M: 821248 kB clutter@clutter-MS-6728 ~ $ Edited August 1, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Why not run a 64bit installation?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 (edited) That's a fair question, but you may not have been keeping track... Thumbnail sketch- Clutter is intentionally keeping alive and updating various P4-478 towers, about 8 or 9 of them, and in addition, about 3-4 others of the P2/P3 era. It's a hobby... And in fact I keep my very first 'PC era' computer running, a 486-66 bought used in 1996. Sentimental value, you know... Don't use any more- I fire it up every 2-3 years or so. Windows 95- wow! Heh! But I do own or maintain 2 machines that are 64bit, soon to be 3 as I add a Dell Precision 390 acquired on Ebay the past week. So I'm definitely 'gung ho' to be as 64bit as humanly possible, yet I am strangely compelled to keep the P4-478 stuff alive. Go figure. And indeed, this past 6 weeks or so I spent a little money to acquire some new (used) MSI mobos, now totalling 4, that support P4-478 up to pretty much its limits at 3.4/3.6GHz. And various other gadgets, mainly DVDRW and more memory. Oh, and a few more P4-478 CPU's which are getting dirt cheap now. Edited August 1, 2014 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 I have been following your posts but I figured if you had 4gb of ram installed, then you had a newer machine that could support 64bit installs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 (edited) Got it. Nope, all my P4-478 boxes are 32 bit. Every 64 bit machine I have access to is using DDR2 or newer. Heck, 2G is probably all I need on those older boxen anyway. This was more of a mental exercise. I just needed to test those other two 1G sticks quickly. Edited August 1, 2014 by Cluttermagnet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 (edited) Most accurate way to check RAM in Linux... vtel57@ericsbane06~:$ free -t total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 4046428 3120152 926276 0 122108 1050864 -/+ buffers/cache: 1947180 2099248 Swap: 3132412 0 3132412 Total: 7178840 3120152 4058688 $ man free Have fun. Even easier to read (-h for Human readable) is to use: free -t -h It showed my Debian Desktop as: Mem: 1.8G Total 1.7G Used .96 Free It shows it in the same format that Eric posted. Just easier to read in GB than kilobytes/kB. Edited August 1, 2014 by LilBambi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 thanks for that cool trick with "free"! FYI, not quite the same in Ubuntu, FWIW, as using the -h flag gave an invalid error and showed this for Ubuntu users: usage: free [-b|-k|-m|-g] [-l] [-o] [-t] [-s delay] [-c count] [-V] -b,-k,-m,-g show output in bytes, KB, MB, or GB -l show detailed low and high memory statistics -o use old format (no -/+buffers/cache line) -t display total for RAM + swap -s update every [delay] seconds -c update [count] times -V display version information and exit So Ubuntu users need to type free -t -g to accomplish the same thing, in human readable format in GBs. Still very cool tool! Thanks VT & Bambi! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 I hate it when a distro goes off and changes standard stuff like that. ....sigh... Thanks for posting how to get it on Ubuntu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 if it's any consolation, I only use Ubuntu and I learned the "free" tool on Ubuntu, so that is "standard" to me?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Even easier to read (-h for Human readable) is to use: free -t -h It showed my Debian Desktop as: Mem: 1.8G Total 1.7G Used .96 Free It shows it in the same format that Eric posted. Just easier to read in GB than kilobytes/kB. Odd mine shows 1gb less than I have Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 (edited) ROFL! (That was for Hedon) Actually I think that Free has changed across the boards and yours is the norm now. But Debian still uses an additional stop likely from the old ways of using -h for human readable for many commands that give results in kB or bytes as well as human readable MB and/or GB as appropriate. Likely just not deprecated in Debian Stable (Wheezy). http://www.linfo.org/free.html http://www.linuxnix....-linuxunix.html http://www.tecmint.c...x-free-command/ Interesting. Does it show total correctly elsewhere? (Josh) Edited August 1, 2014 by LilBambi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Maybe that is why they deprecated -h for free? What is your result if you use free -t -g? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Interesting. Does it show total correctly elsewhere? (Josh) Everywhere else it shows up correct. Here is my meminfo: http://ix.io/dHq Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 16399140 kB Looks right there in your info file for sure. Did you also test to see if correct amount if you use free -t -g as noted in the same posting? It could be just the free -t -h or it could be free command in general. Just wanted to be sure which it is. If it is just the ones using -h, that could answer why they stopped using it. If it also is incorrect using free -t -g then it could be that free is useless for more than a quick look (knowing it's not gonna be accurate). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Wow! Free with no stops/arguments works right. Can you repeat that without -t ? free -h free -g Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Same thing: Off to work.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Have a great shift. I think unless you use Free with NO arguments then it is not a trustworthy tool. I will only use it as free, alone, or not at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted August 2, 2014 Author Share Posted August 2, 2014 (edited) I tried Fran's method in Terminal: clutter@clutter-P4S55FX:~$ free -t -h total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1.5G 981M 527M 7.0M 110M 445M -/+ buffers/cache: 424M 1.1G Swap: 2.0G 0B 2.0G Total: 3.5G 981M 2.5G clutter@clutter-P4S55FX:~$ This is on one of my mid+ performance level P4-478 towers over at 'Rancho Clutter'. Asrock P4S55FX+ with 1.5G DDR1 RAM. Will try these commands a bunch more times on various other towers until I have them memorized. My memory is still OK but the search and retrieval are getting a little fuzzy. A Northwood 2.4GHz on this one, BTW. It will get upgraded. I now have a spare Northwood 3.2 GHz to throw in there... Oh, Linux Mint 17 Mate on this 32 bit box. Mint and Ubuntu continue to diverge, I guess. Edited August 2, 2014 by Cluttermagnet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 (edited) It's nice that Linux gives us choices. I just upgraded my friend's machine to Linux Mint 17. He's got one of those low end Dell Optiplex units that seem to go on forever. This one is a 210L from 2006 that is a refugee from his daughter's office. It has a Socket 775 mobo and won't run any sort of dual core CPU. Maximum memory is 2 GB. Onboard Intel video sucks, and no PCI-e slot nor room for a video upgrade. All he wants to do is get email and surf the Web. Without Linux this would be a landfill candidate. However 32 bit MATE Linux Mint makes it a good machine. I told him the new O/S is good for 5 years but after that it might be time to get something new. As for me - quad core APU, SSD, 16 GB RAM - I use 64 bit Cinnamon. It's all good. Edited August 2, 2014 by raymac46 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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