I use oracle 8.1.7 on linux kernel 2.4.7 of RedHat 7.2 ,and the system memory is 4G .At first I booted linux and start up the database, all was normal,but after I ran some applications which inserted large amount of data into the database and took 15 hours ,the system memory insreased to 3.9G,even after I shutdowm the database ,the memory still didn't release much . Only the Oracle release 700 M . From the data the "top" command showed, I found the "cached memory " reached 3.2G . I don't know what is the reason :oracle ,linux kernel or something else ...... Could u help me ,waiting... Thanks!!!

That is just fine. Linux automatically uses any unused memory as disk cache. If the memory requirements of applications get larger, the disk cache is automatically reduced to free up memory for the apps. The same is true for buffers, a very short-lived memory used internally in the kernel. If applications need more memory, the buffers are freed and the memory is made available to the applications. If you use the "free" command, the second line (labeled "+/- cache/buffers") will tell you the total free memory you have, PLUS the memory used for cache and buffers, which is equal to the actual amount of memory available to applications. PS: Even though it isn't memory leaks that you're seeing, here's some info. Mem leaks are application specific, and any leaked memory will be freed up after the application is killed. If this doesn't happen (as it is sometimes the case with win9x), you've got a bug in the kernel.