From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 17 01:25:35 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C453106564A for ; Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:25:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwmaillists@googlemail.com) Received: from mail-ew0-f21.google.com (mail-ew0-f21.google.com [209.85.219.21]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB61F8FC0A for ; Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:25:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwmaillists@googlemail.com) Received: by ewy14 with SMTP id 14so2816692ewy.19 for ; Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:25:33 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlemail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:date:from:to:subject :message-id:in-reply-to:references:x-mailer:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=7AaT6Dzcq74yB9XrWGN5Eu46Oa0UzLdwbzdDqRYfwBg=; b=bHpq+ZFu1S1cTvRaE8Tl04TQr7UjLRCEeSOQp6YLVRQKrIibOFfdSPf2rR4zNSkiPB 5NpYFHdAS1KA9/VVAqKBFBvT70sRyLaqg6xL2QDAsizn1nqMirFHRomv6PTDy70shpXu n2gqWQgAZtbDW0AXnqONQgGhLKYySZ1MpH5as= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlemail.com; s=gamma; h=date:from:to:subject:message-id:in-reply-to:references:x-mailer :mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=Zc3N1OihTUpY8mOiqdUTE3ZFTOPQ3JEJlPKfH2x+S1CY6CuJxpNn0JiZ+lVQlB6DaB 8YwtSKq42GN1/yljBJUIHMKB6TPL537Tbv8Thn8KFb88FBI+mC0qtYQ+HKRgp3I+3+K9 TflhKVtBt8UmZzV5g5MLIfTpTLyw43tmp42ds= Received: by 10.210.104.20 with SMTP id b20mr2599866ebc.133.1232155533882; Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:25:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from gumby.homeunix.com (bb-87-81-140-128.ukonline.co.uk [87.81.140.128]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id c24sm3857144ika.17.2009.01.16.17.25.32 (version=SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:25:33 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:25:19 +0000 From: RW To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20090117012519.71feb293@gumby.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20090116222249.S10333@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> References: <4970C565.1000304@njit.edu> <20090116222249.S10333@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.5.0 (GTK+ 2.12.11; i386-portbld-freebsd7.1) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: RAM/Memory resources on 7 STABLE X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:25:35 -0000 On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:23:06 +0100 (CET) Wojciech Puchar wrote: > > When I boot this machine it usually shows (in top) about 11 G Free > > in the Mem: line > > > > The machine, in this snippet, has been up for 5 days 22 hours and > > change and it now shows 1436M free in the Mem: line > > I've been watching the number and it has been slowly decreasing > > over the 5 days since its last boot. It looks like as the Free > > line trends down, the Inact value trends up to keep the total Mem > > used at the installed 12G > > ALL unused memory is used as disk cache in FreeBSD. Although, looking at the output of top, most of the memory is in the inactive state. As I understand it cache pages go from active to cached, and the inactive queue contains pages that need to be written out to swap before they can be reused. The very high level of inactive memory looks suspiciously like a memory-leak to me. Hopefully someone who knows more about this will step in - don't take my word for it.