Bug 23048

Summary:	memory leak
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Need Real Name <nercessi>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	7.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-12-31 02:38:59 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Need Real Name 2000-12-31 02:38:56 UTC

whenever i boot red hat linux 7, it start off with 76000 KB of free 
physical memory.  i have a total of 128 MB of memory.  then i start an 
application like staroffice or realplayer or emacs or a game.  i know that 
when you start an application, that the operating system has to allocate 
memory for the program to be run.  my problem is this:  when i close the 
application, i type free, and it looks like linux has not deallocated the 
memory it used.  when i really loaded it, and then killed those apps, it 
said that i only had about 3000 KB of physical memory remaining while my 
swap file was hardly being used.  is there some kind of memory leak going 
on, is this the way linux works, or this is nothing to worry about?

Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2001-01-02 06:17:16 UTC

It's caching files in memory - look at
the +/- buffers/cache line.