[mythtv-users] Mythtv stuttering - help debugging - memory leak?

[Jan Ceuleers]

John Drescher wrote:
> This is normal with linux it means linux is actually using memory for
> a cache. I rebooted my machine with 6 GB of memory last night to
> replace the cpu fan and I now have 197 MB free out of 6GB. In this
> case I have used myth since the reboot.
> 
> jmd0 ~ # free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:       6094504    5896820     197684          0     143644    4251608
> -/+ buffers/cache:    1501568    4592936
> Swap:     15681512      78048   15603464

To amplify what you said, the number in the 'free' column on the first 
row (197MB in the above example) essentially means the total amount of 
RAM that is entirely unused by the system for any purpose.

If you want to know how much RAM is available for allocation by 
applications, possible to the detriment of file cache etc, you need to 
look at the 2nd row (4.5GB).