This is kind of a followup to the previous post about Linux seemingly being out of memory.

There is kernel parameter that can be altered on the run to free up memory used up by pagecache, dentries and inodes. In the following outputs we are interested in buffers/cache values. Note that sync command should be run first to flush out all cached objects.

Following is output of free command before anything is done:

root@ultra:~# sync;free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:      16446564    9924728    6521836          0     337568    8135860
-/+ buffers/cache:    1451300   14995264
Swap:      1998840          0    1998840

Now by echoing 1 into /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches memory used by pagecache is freed:

root@ultra:~# echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@ultra:~# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:      16446564    1557852   14888712          0        504     150524
-/+ buffers/cache:    1406824   15039740
Swap:      1998840          0    1998840

By echoing 2 into the same file you can free up memory used by dentries and inodes:

root@ultra:~# echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@ultra:~# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:      16446564    1427692   15018872          0       1404     151332
-/+ buffers/cache:    1274956   15171608
Swap:      1998840          0    1998840

The above two steps can be combined into one:

root@ultra:~# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Alternatively sysctl -w vm.drop_caches=3 will achieve the same. Most of the information is described here, but I just do not feel like looking for it every time I need it.