How do I interpret the +1 offset in free -m on Linux terminal console?

user19000691

11/6/23, 1:01 PM

Well, I made a mistake with my first post of this question and I'm pretty sure that I've figured this problem out; however, I love to get feedback from other programmers who may have more direct expertise with issues.

I landed on this page because I am researching the best descriptive methods for explaining the output that sudo free -m command displays in the Ubuntu/Linux terminal. I have a problem with interpreting this output free -m on Ubuntu/Linux terminal console.

The rows and columns are self-explanatory enough for the most part; however, what is irritating me is that in every example that I analyzed the free = used(memory) - total- buffer - cache and the used = total - free - buffer - cache; the result is always offset by +1 megabyte greater than the system report for free (memory).

This is due to the indexing memory addresses where the counts begin at 0, right? Or is it a swap issue, an availability issue, or just some anomaly that is treated as negligible?

1 + 3

command-line

ram

free

user10489

11/6/23, 1:21 PM

It is not necessary to use sudo to run free.

user19000691

11/6/23, 3:11 PM

Yes, I am aware of this fact. :) Thank you for noting it but this is for an Operating System Architecture course; the use of 'sudo' is mostly demonstrative, as sudo is the superuser and/or system administrative (BSD System Manager's) command that shows that we are aware of how to handle administrative tasks.

user10489

11/6/23, 7:01 PM

Excessive use of sudo is a very bad habit. When it becomes reflexive to just prefix everything with sudo, you will eventually run something that will break things when it would have been fine in a user context. Saying "but this is for a class" makes it worse, because now you are using bad examples to teach.

Score:1

Ubuntu

user10489

11/6/23, 1:23 PM

The -m option of free rounds the numbers to 1M. So the discrepancy is almost certainly round off error. Recheck the numbers without -m

+ 1

user19000691

11/6/23, 3:12 PM

Thank you user10489; that definitely clarified the problem. I am going to reference your comment in my paper BTW...

Elon Musk

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