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Prior to doing some benchmarking work how would one free up the memory (RAM) that the Linux Kernel is consuming for its buffers and cache?

Note that this is mostly useful for benchmarking. Emptying the buffers and cache reduces performance! If you're here because you thought that freeing buffers and cache was a positive thing, go and read Linux ate my RAM!. The short story: free memory is unused memory is wasted memory.

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    What is the interest in open dup question and answer self? unix.stackexchange.com/questions/58553/… & unix.stackexchange.com/questions/17936/… Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 13:59
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    @innocent-world - never saw these when I was searching, so it appeared to be a hole in the knowledge base on this site, and was attempting to fill it in. Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 14:01
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    @innocent-world - in looking at those 2 Q's I think there is still room for this Q&A. This one acts as a canonical Q&A on the site. Those are fairly specific in what they're addressing. Additionally this one shows information about analyzing the buffers & cache and also how to set the parameters using sudo. Neither of the other 2 questions address any of this. Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 14:09
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    Please read this article linuxatemyram.com If you understand the risk then you can do free && sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches && free Commented Mar 23, 2015 at 4:36
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    "Note that this is mostly useful for benchmarking." Tip, I'm also using it to reduce memory usage in my VM before suspending it to disk. Commented May 1, 2024 at 22:27

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Emptying the buffers cache

If you ever want to empty it you can use this chain of commands.

# free && sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches && free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1018916 980832 38084 0 46924 355764 -/+ buffers/cache: 578144 440772 Swap: 2064376 128 2064248 total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1018916 685008 333908 0 224 108252 -/+ buffers/cache: 576532 442384 Swap: 2064376 128 2064248

You can signal the Linux Kernel to drop various aspects of cached items by changing the numeric argument to the above command.

  • To free pagecache:

    # echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

  • To free dentries and inodes:

    # echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

  • To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:

    # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

The above are meant to be run as root. If you're trying to do them using sudo then you'll need to change the syntax slightly to something like these:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' $ sudo sh -c 'echo 2 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' $ sudo sh -c 'echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'

NOTE: There's a more esoteric version of the above command if you're into that:

$ echo "echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" | sudo sh

Why the change in syntax? The /bin/echo program is running as root, because of sudo, but the shell that's redirecting echo's output to the root-only file is still running as you. Your current shell does the redirection before sudo starts.

Seeing what's in the buffers and cache

Take a look at linux-ftools if you'd like to analyze the contents of the buffers & cache. Specifically if you'd like to see what files are currently being cached.

fincore

With this tool you can see what files are being cached within a give directory.

fincore [options] files... --pages=false Do not print pages --summarize When comparing multiple files, print a summary report --only-cached Only print stats for files that are actually in cache.

For example, /var/lib/mysql/blogindex:

root@xxxxxx:/var/lib/mysql/blogindex# fincore --pages=false --summarize --only-cached * stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_05_21.MYI: file size=93840384 , total pages=22910 , cached pages=1 , cached size=4096, cached perc=0.004365 stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_05_22.MYI: file size=417792 , total pages=102 , cached pages=1 , cached size=4096, cached perc=0.980392 stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_05_23.MYI: file size=826368 , total pages=201 , cached pages=1 , cached size=4096, cached perc=0.497512 stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_05_24.MYI: file size=192512 , total pages=47 , cached pages=1 , cached size=4096, cached perc=2.127660 stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_06_03.MYI: file size=345088 , total pages=84 , cached pages=43 , cached size=176128, cached perc=51.190476 stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_06_04.MYD: file size=1478552 , total pages=360 , cached pages=97 , cached size=397312, cached perc=26.944444 stats for CLUSTER_LOG_2010_06_04.MYI: file size=205824 , total pages=50 , cached pages=29 , cached size=118784, cached perc=58.000000 stats for COMMENT_CONTENT_2010_06_03.MYI: file size=100051968 , total pages=24426 , cached pages=10253 , cached size=41996288, cached perc=41.975764 stats for COMMENT_CONTENT_2010_06_04.MYD: file size=716369644 , total pages=174894 , cached pages=79821 , cached size=326946816, cached perc=45.639645 stats for COMMENT_CONTENT_2010_06_04.MYI: file size=56832000 , total pages=13875 , cached pages=5365 , cached size=21975040, cached perc=38.666667 stats for FEED_CONTENT_2010_06_03.MYI: file size=1001518080 , total pages=244511 , cached pages=98975 , cached size=405401600, cached perc=40.478751 stats for FEED_CONTENT_2010_06_04.MYD: file size=9206385684 , total pages=2247652 , cached pages=1018661 , cached size=4172435456, cached perc=45.321117 stats for FEED_CONTENT_2010_06_04.MYI: file size=638005248 , total pages=155763 , cached pages=52912 , cached size=216727552, cached perc=33.969556 stats for FEED_CONTENT_2010_06_04.frm: file size=9840 , total pages=2 , cached pages=3 , cached size=12288, cached perc=150.000000 stats for PERMALINK_CONTENT_2010_06_03.MYI: file size=1035290624 , total pages=252756 , cached pages=108563 , cached size=444674048, cached perc=42.951700 stats for PERMALINK_CONTENT_2010_06_04.MYD: file size=55619712720 , total pages=13579031 , cached pages=6590322 , cached size=26993958912, cached perc=48.533080 stats for PERMALINK_CONTENT_2010_06_04.MYI: file size=659397632 , total pages=160985 , cached pages=54304 , cached size=222429184, cached perc=33.732335 stats for PERMALINK_CONTENT_2010_06_04.frm: file size=10156 , total pages=2 , cached pages=3 , cached size=12288, cached perc=150.000000 --- total cached size: 32847278080

With the above output you can see that there are several *.MYD, *.MYI, and *.frm files that are currently being cached.

Swap

If you want to clear out your swap you can use the following commands.

$ free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7987492 7298164 689328 0 30416 457936 -/+ buffers/cache: 6809812 1177680 Swap: 5963772 609452 5354320

Then use this command to disable swap:

$ swapoff -a

You can confirm that it's now empty:

$ free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7987492 7777912 209580 0 39332 489864 -/+ buffers/cache: 7248716 738776 Swap: 0 0 0

And to re-enable it:

$ swapon -a

And now reconfirm with free:

$ free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7987492 7785572 201920 0 41556 491508 -/+ buffers/cache: 7252508 734984 Swap: 5963772 0 5963772
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    never heard of linux-ftools after so many years, though I knew how to drop cache. you are really a guru. Thanks for sharing! Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 12:53
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    The things you say about sync are wrong: according to the linux doc, writting to drop_cache will only clear clean content (already synced). Besides, even if it drops unsynced data, saying that typing the sync command just before clearing cache would save your data is wrong: there is a non zero time between the sync command drop_cache write, so any data could be added during this time lapse. There is nothing atomic here. Commented Nov 13, 2014 at 22:06
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    I got that information here: kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt - "This is a non-destructive operation and will not free any dirty objects.". It also says that sync could be used to increase the droped cache size (for writeback caches). Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 5:06
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    Prefer "sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=1" over "sudo sh -c 'echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'" Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 14:10
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    @slm i like using tee to write as root: echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop-caches Commented Dec 29, 2015 at 14:21

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