On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Mr. B-o-B <mr.chew.baka at gmail.com> wrote:
> [bob at bigdaddy init.d]$ free -m
>             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:          3828       3804         24          0         83       3492
> -/+ buffers/cache:        228       3600
> Swap:         2000          0       2000

There's not actually anything terribly concerning here.  Look at the
*second* line - you only have 228MB of RAM actually being used "for
real" - the rest is just cache.  The Linux kernel is designed to make
use of all available memory for performance reasons, so it will keep
loading things as caches until it runs out of stuff to load or RAM to
fill.  The second line tells you how much is in use disregarding those
caches.

> Here is the output from ps aux.  It looks like java is out of control.  Is
> this normal?

Yes, Java has a reputation for being a resource hog.

 - Tony