free

free - Display amount of free and used memory in the system

R free [ -b | -k | -m | -g ] [ -o ] [ -s delay ] [-t] [-V]

free displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory in the system, as well as the buffers used by the kernel. The shared memory column should be ignored; it is obsolete.

Options

The -b switch displays the amount of memory in bytes; the -k switch (set by default) displays it in kilobytes; the -m switch displays it in megabytes; the -g switch displays it in gigabytes.

The -t switch displays a line containing the totals.

The -o switch disables the display of a "buffer adjusted" line. If the -o option is not specified, free subtracts buffer memory from the used memory and adds it to the free memory reported.

The -s switch activates continuous polling delay seconds apart. You may actually specify any floating point number for delay, usleep(3) is used for microsecond resolution delay times.

The \-V displays version information.

/proc/meminfo

ps(1), slabtop(1), vmstat(8), top(1)

Written by Brian Edmonds. Send bug reports to <albert@users.sf.net>