thank you , Chuck. the outputs are shown below. ls -l /proc/kcore | cut -f5 -d" " 9663680512 grep "MemTotal" /proc/meminfo|cut -d ":" -f2|sed '/ kB/ s/ kB//g'|cut -c9- 8199584 free | grep "Mem" Mem: 8199584 5968036 2231548 <snipped off last fields> tried to factor the proc/kcore value to see where it came from. 2^12 x 61 x 38677 does /proc/kcore include video ram to make the number larger? --- On Sun, 11/29/09, cstickelman@xxxxxxxxxx <cstickelman@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: cstickelman@xxxxxxxxxx <cstickelman@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [ncolug] Re: some bash to shorten To: ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: "nor thern" <zboson2003@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Sunday, November 29, 2009, 9:04 PM How about: ls -l /proc/kcore | cut -f5 -d" " or ls -lh /proc/kcore | cut -f5 -d" " if you want the results to be human-readable... Chuck ---- nor thern <zboson2003@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > grep "MemTotal" /proc/meminfo|cut -d ":" -f2|sed '/ kB/ s/ kB//g'|cut -c9- > > this is the shortest that i have found to print the RAM size as an integer. > unprivileged user . > suggestions to shorten this appreciated. > > To unsubscribe send to ncolug-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.