Memory Problem

[Philipp Steinkrueger]

Hello,

i have a problem with memory management and i coulndt find a solution
doing web-research, so perhaps someone on the list can point me to a
document or give me another answer.

first, this is my system configuration:

linux kernel 2.4.19 with high-memory enabled because i put 2 GB Ram.
128 MB Swap Partition and a 250 MB Swap File.

The Problem appears with the mysql database server. here is the error
message:

Can't create a new thread (errno 11). If you are not out of available
memory, you
can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug

and this is what cat /proc/meminfo shows while the system runs regulary:

MemTotal:      2069560 kB
MemFree:         24576 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:         80808 kB
Cached:        1271288 kB
SwapCached:       1924 kB
Active:         737160 kB
Inactive:       861112 kB
HighTotal:     1179584 kB
HighFree:         2044 kB
LowTotal:       889976 kB
LowFree:         22532 kB
SwapTotal:      384476 kB
SwapFree:       379248 kB

Memfree is at 24 MB but i caught a meminfo when it was about 4 or 6 MB.

i am worried about the high "Cached" value. Could someone tell me if the
cached
content is to be considered as "reserved" and will not be used by programms
requesting
more memory ?

my general questions are:

1) how can i control the memory ? where can i tell the system how much
memory should be
used to cache stuff ? perhaps i can solve the problem this way.
2) what else does the kernel do when a programm spawns a new thread ? if
memory is
not the problem, what else could go wrong when creating a thread ?

If you need something else, like a memstat output, please let me know.

Thank you very much,
Philipp