Memory usage

[Roger Harrell]

 > I've just put my RH 9 box into production. I've been working on
 > tuning it to optimize performance, but am a little confused. When I
 > do ps -aux and total memory usage I get about 40% usage. When I do
 > top, or pull up the system monitor it shows 495 MB in use (the box
 > has 512MB). Where is all the extra memory being used?
 >
 >
 > What does "free -m -t -o" say?

Mem:           501        488         13          0        120        263
Swap:          250         34        216
Total:         752        522        230

 > What is not being used by programs usually is used in caching the
 > filesystem. Using Ajai's command I would expect to see very little
 > free memory but almost all the swap space free.

So it's just utilizing what it can to run faster? In other words the 
fact that all the RAM is in use all the time is an ok thing? I had a 
disk thrashing problem recently so I'm being cautious.

Thanks,
-- 
Roger Harrell