Sign up ×  This question already has an answer here:  I run an
Ubuntu 8.04 on a Slicehost virtual server with some lightweight
server apps - apache22, svnserve, mysql, and proftpd. The only
serious service limitation is RAM - 256MB is what I'm paying
for.  I noticed that if I let the system run for a few
days/weeks, the amount of free RAM slowly declines, and paging
file is being used soon after. For example, upon rebooting I may
have 60% of RAM free, next day it may be at 55%, etc.
total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           256        114        141          0          3
50 -/+ buffers/cache:         61        194 Swap:          511
0        511  How would I prevent the amount of available memory
to decline?  Edit: Here's my ps -aux listing the top memory
consumers. I left out all the system processes. I can see that
apache and mysql top the memory usage.      root      1369  0.0
0.3  16844   952 ?        S<s  00:10   0:00 /sbin/udevd --daemon