What is available memory while using free command?
The output of the free command that I fired on my linux host is as belows:
free total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 263846320 47746620 3290072 1140808 212809628 214382420
Swap: 0 0 0I am not able to figure out what this available part is specifying. The free memory is very less shown i.e around 1.24% even though the total memory is way high and used memory is around 18.09% only.
free -h total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 251G 45G 3.1G 1.1G 202G 204G
Swap: 0B 0B 0BDoes it mean I wont be able to start more applications as free memory is very less. The used memory is 18% only. So shouldn't free memory be 72% and not 1.24% as the command is showing above.
I am confused. Can anyone help?
11 Answer
In the output of free,
Free memory is the amount of memory which is currently not used for anything. This number should be small, because memory which is not used is simply wasted.
Available memory is the amount of memory which is available for allocation to a new process or to existing processes.
The example given in the question shows a healthy system.
7
