Linux Memory Management - techniques and utilities

Read:

1) Chapter 7, "Memory Management," of The Linux System Administrators' Guide (6 pages).

2) man pages for the free (all) and top (scan) commands. Get them on sputnik ("man free" "man top"). Or get them on the web (see the "Linux man pages" link on the class website).

Do:

On sputnik.smc.edu,

1) experiment with the free and top commands. The results will differ if you find yourself on the machine alone, or if there are other simultaneous users. The who command will reveal who else is on the machine.

2) find the files memory1.c, memory2.c, and memory3.c in /home/ftp/pub. They are c language source code files for some tutorial utilities showing how linux manages memory.. You can copy them to your home directory if you like. You can also acquire copies of them by ftp to sputnik (the directory where they reside is the one where files available for anonymous ftp are "published," so they are publicly accessible). Examine them. Based on your progamming language familiarity, try to get some idea what they do.