What is the difference between buffers and cached? (was: Re: 2.4.x Shared memory question)

From: Rogerio Brito (rbrito@iname.com)
Date: Mon Feb 05 2001 - 19:12:45 EST

On Feb 04 2001, LA Walsh wrote:
> Another oddity -- I notice things taking alot more memory
> in 2.4. This coincides with 'top' consistently showing I have 0 shared
> memory.

        AFAIK, the 2.4.0 series does share memory, but it's just the
        counters that are not updated, for they are costly.

> total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
> Mem: 525897728 465264640 60633088 0 82145280 287862784
> Swap: 270909440 0 270909440

        This is the perfect time to ask one thing that I don't know,
        but that I've tried to find without success: what is the
        difference between "buffers" and "cached"? I'd make the wild
        guess that "buffers" would mean any types of buffers that the
        kernel maintains, while "cached" would have something to do
        with cached disk blocks...

        Are these guesses correct or completely, way off?

        Thanks for any hints, Roger... 

-- 
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  Rogerio Brito - rbrito@iname.com - http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/
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