Why the system information message when accessing an Ubuntu server doesn't match free -m?

Solution 1:

system info comes from "landscape-sysinfo" binary which takes the metrics from /proc/meminfo for memory which is also the source for free command as well, so ultimately they should match. For ubuntu 12.04.3 though there was a bug for "ladnscape-sysinfo" where it was not calculating utilization correctly, you might still have it on you OS:

source bug: landscape-sysinfo bug