OK here is my free -m output.

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:            89         73         15          0         12         23
-/+ buffers/cache:         38         51
Swap:          256         40        216

I have 2 questions:

1) Why does it show 89 for Mem? Is that an issue of 1024 to 1000 conversions?

2) Why am I using swap for so many things even though I have 15MB free physical memory?

That's the Linux kernel taking a little bit of memory for itself. Here's the output on a "real" box with 3072 megs of physical RAM:

[root@host4 vbin]# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3037       3031          5          0         25       2784
-/+ buffers/cache:        221       2815
Swap:         4094        145       3949

That's the linux VM system in effect -- it will utilize all of your available memory, including swapping things out that aren't used that often, to make room for buffers/cache.

-Chris

Thanks!