# Incorrect "system.memory.actual.free" metrics

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** metricbeat\
**Created:** [April 27, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783 "2017-04-27T02:05:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tim\_wong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@tim\_wong](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tim_wong)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783/1 "2017-04-27T02:05:17Z")

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It seems that the `system.memory.actual.free` metric collected from Metricbeat is incorrect.

According to the [document](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/exported-fields-system.html#_system_memory_actual_free):

> ### system.memory.actual.free
> 
> Actual free memory in bytes. It is calculated based on the OS. On Linux it **consists of the free memory plus caches and buffers**. On OSX it is a sum of free memory and the inactive memory. On Windows, it is equal to system.memory.free.

However, the actual collected free memory (collected by Metricbeat) does not include the caches and buffers. It does not align with the metrics I collected from `free -m` in the system.

**Metricbeat**

```auto
system.memory.actual.free: 3.8 GiB
system.memory.actual.used.bytes: 25.7 GiB

```

**System**

```auto
$ free -mh

```

```auto
              total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 29G 3.9G 2.1G 289M 23G 24G

```

According to the system, the `system.memory.actual.free` should be 24GiB instead of 3.8GiB.

Would it be a misconfiguration or a bug?

The metricbeat is installed on:

```auto
Linux version 3.10.0-514.16.1.el7.x86_64 (mockbuild@x86-039.build.eng.bos.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-11) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Fri Mar 10 13:12:32 EST 2017

```

Thank you for any help!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ruflin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ruflin/32/3116_2.png) [@ruflin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ruflin)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 8:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783/2 "2017-04-28T08:17:24Z")

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Which version of metricbeat are you using? I reminded me off [https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/2653](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/2653) but you are on Linux. I remember we did some changes in the past on this. @andrewkroh knows perhaps more?

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**Author:** ![andrewkroh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andrewkroh/32/3784_2.png) [@andrewkroh](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/andrewkroh)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 3:24am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783/3 "2017-05-03T03:24:39Z")

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This seems to be the same as [Metricbeat system.memory.actual.free - is it accurate?](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-system-memory-actual-free-is-it-accurate/80650), where Metricbeat does not use the `MemAvailable` value from the kernel.

@tim_wong Can you please open a new issue for this in the Github repo so we can track this.

FYI @simonl

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@simonl](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simonl)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 7:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783/4 "2017-05-03T07:16:28Z")

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Great stuff, I'll be able to dump my Nagios mem checker 😉

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tim\_wong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@tim\_wong](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tim_wong)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2017, 8:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783/5 "2017-05-06T08:12:58Z")

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Thanks! I saw that an issue has been opened: [https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/4202](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues/4202)

Can't wait for its release! 😋

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 3, 2017, 8:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/incorrect-system-memory-actual-free-metrics/83783/6 "2017-06-03T08:18:40Z")

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