Size of /var/log/messages vs. Size of cached

Aug 21, 2008 1 Replies
B

Is there a correlation between the size of the /var/log/messages file and the amount reported as "cached" when the top utility is run? I see that if I put a lot of log messages in the /var/log/messages file that the amount cached directly increases. If I then remove the /var/ log/messages file, the amount cached does not decrease.



Is this the expected behavior? In general, is there a way to keep the amount cached down? I notice my system crashing when the amount cached reaches a certain amount.



I am running Linux 2.6.10 on PowerPC.


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A

"Cached" refers to file data that's cached in RAM, so if you write a lot to a file, the cached file data will increase (unless there is something else competing for RAM). So yes, writing to /var/log/messages will tend to increase the amount cached; but normally the amount written to /var/log/messages is small compared to the cache size.

Probably the syslogd still has the file open, so it's not really deleted, just unlinked.

Start a memory-intensive application that does not access files.

That's a bug in your kernel. As others have mentioned, try something more recent if possible.

- anton

M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
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