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FREE(1)				 User Commands			       FREE(1)

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

SYNOPSIS
       free [options]

DESCRIPTION
       free  displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap mem‐
       ory in the system, as well as the buffers and caches used by  the  ker‐
       nel.  The  information  is  gathered by parsing /proc/meminfo. The dis‐
       played columns are:

       total  Total installed memory (MemTotal and SwapTotal in /proc/meminfo)

       used   Used memory (calculated as total - free)

       free   Unused memory (MemFree and SwapFree in /proc/meminfo)

       shared Memory used (mostly) by tmpfs (Shmem in /proc/meminfo, available
	      on kernels 2.6.32, displayed as zero if not available)

       buffers
	      Memory used by kernel buffers (Buffers in /proc/meminfo)

       cached Memory  used by the page cache  (calculated as Cached - Shmem in
	      /proc/meminfo - the Cached value is actually  the	 sum  of  page
	      cache and tmpfs memory)

OPTIONS
       -b, --bytes
	      Display the amount of memory in bytes.

       -k, --kilo
	      Display the amount of memory in kilobytes.  This is the default.

       -m, --mega
	      Display the amount of memory in megabytes.

       -g, --giga
	      Display the amount of memory in gigabytes.

       --tera Display the amount of memory in terabytes.

       -h, --human
	      Show  all	 output	 fields automatically scaled to shortest three
	      digit unit and display the units of print out.  Following	 units
	      are used.

		B = bytes
		K = kilos
		M = megas
		G = gigas
		T = teras

	      If  unit	is  missing, and you have petabyte of RAM or swap, the
	      number is in terabytes and columns might	not  be	 aligned  with
	      header.

       -c, --count count
	      Display the result count times.  Requires the -s option.

       -l, --lohi
	      Show detailed low and high memory statistics.

       -o, --old
	      Display the output in old format, the only difference being this
	      option will disable the display of the "buffer adjusted" line.

       -s, --seconds seconds
	      Continuously display the result delay seconds  apart.   You  may
	      actually	specify any floating point number for delay, usleep(3)
	      is used for microsecond resolution delay times.

       --si   Use power of 1000 not 1024.

       -t, --total
	      Display a line showing the column totals.

       --help Print help.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information.

FILES
       /proc/meminfo
	      memory information

SEE ALSO
       ps(1), slabtop(1), top(1), vmstat(8).

AUTHORS
       Written by Brian Edmonds.

REPORTING BUGS
       Please send bug reports to ⟨procps@freelists.org⟩

procps-ng			September 2011			       FREE(1)

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