From Linux Man Pages
free - Display amount of free and used memory in the system
free [-b | -k | -m] [-o] [-s delay ] [-t] [-V]
DESCRIPTION
free displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory in the system, as well as the buffers
used by the kernel. The shared memory column should be ignored; it is obsolete.
Options
The -b switch displays the amount of memory in bytes; the -k switch (set by default) displays it in kilobytes;
the -m switch displays it in megabytes.
The -t switch displays a line containing the totals.
The -o switch disables the display of a "buffer adjusted" line. If the -o option is not specified, free sub-
tracts buffer memory from the used memory and adds it to the free memory reported.
The -s switch activates continuous polling delay seconds apart. You may actually specify any floating point num-
ber for delay, usleep(3) is used for microsecond resolution delay times.
The -V displays version information.
FILES
/proc/meminfo-- memory information
RELATED
ps(1), slabtop(1), vmstat(8), top(1)
CATEGORY