top command output: memory issue

[praveen..]

Hi,
I have 32GB Physical memory & 12 GB SWAP on my server.

free and top command is showing that all the physical memory is in use.

# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 32752068 32703364 48704 0 535836 16945332
-/+ buffers/cache: 15222196 17529872
Swap: 12683308 192 12683116


for the top output, please find the attached file.

top - 11:08:02 up 17 days, 3:57, 4 users, load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.00
Tasks: 189 total, 1 running, 188 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.2% us, 0.4% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.3% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 32752068k total, 32714820k used, 37248k free, 536384k buffers
Swap: 12683308k total, 192k used, 12683116k free, 16945464k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
21144 asuser 16 0 7535m 7.2g 12m S 0.0 23.1 0:00.15 wlserver
12736 asuser 16 0 3726m 3.5g 12m S 0.0 11.2 0:00.22 wlserver
12852 asuser 16 0 885m 761m 11m S 0.0 2.4 0:00.12 wlserver
24995 wladmin 16 0 201m 78m 19m S 0.0 0.2 0:21.98 wlserver
30371 wladmin 16 0 258m 52m 7920 S 0.0 0.2 0:10.26 wlserver
11125 root 16 0 143m 17m 9.9m S 0.0 0.1 0:00.57 nautilus
3622 root 16 0 26976 14m 1724 S 0.0 0.0 1:57.83 hald
11118 root 16 0 93932 12m 8700 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.35 gnome-panel
11033 root 16 0 87868 11m 7336 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.21 gnome-session



I have sorted the process list as the %MEM usage.

So it shows that all the processes are using near about 40% of physical memory (40% of 32GB).

But in the 3rd line of top output or free command out, it is showing that system is using full amount memory.

can you please suggest why it is happening?

one more thing, why it is not using swap?

Thanks

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

This is becoming a FAQ, please see:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1029490
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1098585

[praveen..]

Thanks