To see the RAM details, you should filter its output on the memory like this: sudo dmidecode -type memory The dependable DMI table decoder command dmidecode gives you all kinds of information about your system's hardware. Let's see how can you see what type of RAM your system has. That's enough discussion on the memory unit. To exit the top command, press the Ctrl+C keys.

You can press Shift+M to sort it by memory. Just run the command in the terminal: topīy default, the top command output is sorted by CPU consumption. Not only does it show the total memory usage in real-time, but it also shows the memory consumption by various processes. To stop the continuously running command, press Ctrl+C.Īn alternative and in my opinion better way is to the top command. This will change the output of the free command after every 2 seconds. If you want to keep a tab on the memory usage, you can combine the watch and free command. If your system is often running out of available RAM, you should consider adding swap space to your Ubuntu machine. This available RAM is the free RAM your system can use. You have to focus on the Mem row and the total and available columns.Īs you can see, my Ubuntu server (running this site) has 1.9 GB of total RAM and 1.1 GB of available RAM. Total used free shared buff/cache available You should see an output like this: :~# free -h

This means that you get to see the RAM size in GB, MB etc instead of in bytes.

The -h option displays the output in a human-readable format. You can use the free command to display the amount of free and used memory (RAM) in the system. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can achieve the following in the terminal:Ĭheck the total RAM size and the free RAM You may even want to check the kind of RAM it is (DDR1 or DDR2). As someone who manages Ubuntu servers, you'll need to know how much RAM your system has, and how much of the RAM is free to use.

Monitor ram usage ubuntu