From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 6 3: 1:30 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from axl.noc.iafrica.com (axl.noc.iafrica.com [196.31.1.175]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 920E114F8E for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 03:01:24 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sheldonh@axl.noc.iafrica.com) Received: from sheldonh (helo=axl.noc.iafrica.com) by axl.noc.iafrica.com with local-esmtp (Exim 3.037 #1) id 11YnsG-0007TM-00; Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:00:40 +0200 From: Sheldon Hearn To: "TFC WLAN 97/98 - IST - ext.2269 (8418269)" Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Inactive memory In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 06 Oct 1999 10:48:31 +0100." Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:00:40 +0200 Message-ID: <28727.939204040@axl.noc.iafrica.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 06 Oct 1999 10:48:31 +0100, "TFC WLAN 97/98 - IST - ext.2269 (8418269)" wrote: > I have 512MB of RAM but a significant part (300MB) is only > reported as free for a few hours after a reboot, > then it becomes "inactive". That's a good thing. Inactive pages are those which back objects that used to be referenced by some program but have since been "freed" up. Instead of being marked "free", they're marked "inactive". This is part of the VM system's caching technique. If some process now requires a new reference to those pages, they may not need to be filled from disk. > I think that's why we have a slow system, specially with regard > to Pine that takes for ever to close/open a large mailbox, because it > spends a lot of time allocating memory (during that time the systems > becomes very slow)... No, this isn't why you have a slow system. Pine just sucks at handling large mailboxes. :-) Later, Sheldon. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message