In Linux, what is the difference between “buffers” and “cache” reported by the free command?
The “cached” total will also include some other memory allocations, such as any tmpfs filesytems. To see this in effect try: mkdir t mount -t tmpfs none t dd if=/dev/zero of=t/zero.file bs=10240 count=10240 sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; free -m umount t sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; free -m and you will see the “cache” … Read more