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

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Bill Contact options for registered users 's Avatar (by Gravatar) posted on
August 21, 2008, 1:53 am
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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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Anton Ertl Contact options for registered users 's Avatar (by Gravatar) posted on
August 21, 2008, 9:58 am
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Re: Size of /var/log/messages vs. Size of cached
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"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.

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

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

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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
snipped-for-privacy@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
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