Display available memory on Linux / Ubuntu

Run this command from a terminal window. This works on debian, ubuntu, and redhat. I’m sure it works on others but those are the only ones I have access to.

cat /proc/meminfo

You should see results similar to this:

MemTotal:      3615716 kB
MemFree:        132528 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:         50028 kB
Cached:        1572772 kB
SwapCached:      80716 kB
Active:         580208 kB
Inactive:      1142848 kB
HighTotal:     2752384 kB
HighFree:         8576 kB
LowTotal:       863332 kB
LowFree:        123952 kB
SwapTotal:     2104504 kB
SwapFree:      1064540 kB

| More

This article was originally written on 09/11/06 Tagged with: SysAdmin, Ubuntu

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Comments (4)

1. July 28, 2007 2:34 am
   asnd16

   thanks

2. October 9, 2007 5:40 am
   nomad

   or use command free

3. October 21, 2008 11:48 pm
   dude

   hmmm… when i’m trying the command : free -m
   the result is different.

   cat /proc/meminfo :
   MemTotal: 4054364 kB
   MemFree: 338924 kB

   free -m :
   total used free shared buffers cached
   Mem: 3959 3491 468 0 8 787

   can U explain about this?

4. November 28, 2008 8:10 pm
   Shane

   I know this was a while ago, but in case somebody else uses this page for reference.

   The command ‘free -m’ will display the memory in MB’s where the ‘free’ alone is in kb’s