Checking your Memory (RAM) Availability from the Command Line.

Uses

A great way to check the status of your system’s memory is with the ‘free’ command. This command will show you a snapshot of memory (RAM) availability.

Fire Up the Command Line

Type the following:

free

This will spit a read out of the current state of memory. You should see six columns: total, used, free, shared, buffers and cached. By defualt this will display kilobytes, but you can choice how this will display. For example…

free -m

The -m flag will display the memory in megabytes. Other options…

• -b for bytes
• -k for kilobytes
• -g for gigabytes

More Options

Another feature of this command is that you can have it display a read out in intervals of your choice. For example, try the following…

free -m -s 5

You should see a read out display every 5 seconds now. (Ctrl + c to interrupt)

free --help

For a list of all other possible options.