st: Time stolen from a virtual machine.Before Linux 2.5.41, this includes IO-wait time. us: Time spent running non-kernel code.

CPU – These are percentages of total CPU time.cs: number of context switches per second.in: number of interrupts per second, including the clock.bo: Blocks sent to a block device (blocks/s).bi: Blocks received from a block device (blocks/s).buff: the amount of memory used as buffers.

b: number of processes in uninterruptible sleep.

r: number of processes waiting for run time.

The detailed description listed below provides an explanation for each value in case you need assistance in analyzing the results. The table below lists the most useful variations of the free command. The free command has multiple options to format the output so that it better matches your requirements. The key figure being the available value as it displays how much memory is still available for running new applications. Memory reserved by the OS to allocate as buffers when process need themĮstimation of how much memory is available for starting new applications, without swapping.Ĭompared to the /proc/meminfo file, the free command provides less information. Unused memory (free= total – used – buff/cache) Memory currently in use by running processes (used= total – free – buff/cache) The data represents the used/available memory and the swap memory figures in kilobytes.

Command to check cpu usage in linux