Monitoring the memory usage of a Linux system is crucial for maintaining its performance and stability. Understanding the different commands and tools available for this task is essential for any system administrator or user who wants to optimize their Linux environment.
There are multiple ways to check the memory usage in Linux, each providing different levels of detail and insights. The most commonly used commands are free, vmstat, and top. The free command provides a snapshot of the total memory, used memory, and free memory on the system. Vmstat provides more detailed information about memory usage over time, including statistics on paging, swapping, and I/O activity. Top provides a real-time view of the running processes and their memory consumption, allowing users to identify memory-intensive applications or processes that may be causing performance issues.