free - Display amount of free and used memory in the system
free displays the total amount of free and used physical
and swap memory in the system, as well as the buffers and caches used by the
kernel. The information is gathered by parsing /proc/meminfo. The displayed
columns are:
- total
- Total installed memory (MemTotal and SwapTotal in /proc/meminfo)
- used
- Used memory (calculated as total - free - buffers -
cache)
- free
- Unused memory (MemFree and SwapFree in /proc/meminfo)
- shared
- Memory used (mostly) by tmpfs (Shmem in /proc/meminfo)
- buffers
- Memory used by kernel buffers (Buffers in /proc/meminfo)
- cache
- Memory used by the page cache and slabs (Cached and SReclaimable in
/proc/meminfo)
- buff/cache
- Sum of buffers and cache
- available
- Estimation of how much memory is available for starting new applications,
without swapping. Unlike the data provided by the cache or
free fields, this field takes into account page cache and also that
not all reclaimable memory slabs will be reclaimed due to items being in
use (MemAvailable in /proc/meminfo, available on kernels 3.14, emulated on
kernels 2.6.27+, otherwise the same as free)
- -b, --bytes
- Display the amount of memory in bytes.
- -k, --kibi
- Display the amount of memory in kibibytes. This is the default.
- -m, --mebi
- Display the amount of memory in mebibytes.
- -g, --gibi
- Display the amount of memory in gibibytes.
- --tebi
- Display the amount of memory in tebibytes.
- --pebi
- Display the amount of memory in pebibytes.
- --kilo
- Display the amount of memory in kilobytes. Implies --si.
- --mega
- Display the amount of memory in megabytes. Implies --si.
- --giga
- Display the amount of memory in gigabytes. Implies --si.
- --tera
- Display the amount of memory in terabytes. Implies --si.
- --peta
- Display the amount of memory in petabytes. Implies --si.
- -h, --human
- Show all output fields automatically scaled to shortest three digit unit
and display the units of print out. Following units are used.
B = bytes
K = kibibyte
M = mebibyte
G = gibibyte
T = tebibyte
P = pebibyte
If unit is missing, and you have exbibyte of RAM or swap, the
number is in tebibytes and columns might not be aligned with header.
- -w, --wide
- Switch to the wide mode. The wide mode produces lines longer than 80
characters. In this mode buffers and cache are reported in
two separate columns.
- -c, --count
count
- Display the result count times. Requires the -s option.
- -l, --lohi
- Show detailed low and high memory statistics.
- -s, --seconds
delay
- Continuously display the result delay seconds apart. You may
actually specify any floating point number for delay using either .
or , for decimal point. usleep(3) is used for microsecond
resolution delay times.
- --si
- Use kilo, mega, giga etc (power of 1000) instead of kibi, mebi, gibi
(power of 1024).
- -t, --total
- Display a line showing the column totals.
- --help
- Print help.
- -V, --version
- Display version information.
- /proc/meminfo
- memory information