> it might be enough to compare with the output of free(1) According to an strace I just ran on "free": . . . open("/proc/meminfo", O_RDONLY) = 3 lseek(3, 0, SEEK_SET) = 0 read(3, "MemTotal: 2010264 kB\nMemFre"..., 1023) = 728 . . . ...so free probably won't help if /proc/meminfo is b0rken.