Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 10:24:27 +0300 From: Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> To: Coert <lgroups@waagmeester.co.za> Cc: FreeBSD questions <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: top memory usage question Message-ID: <AANLkTiniuPnB7f4_GvigkBFp0Xvd7MIxfyGFQopUmYv5@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4BFE40CF.8020203@waagmeester.co.za> References: <4BFE40CF.8020203@waagmeester.co.za>
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On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Coert <lgroups@waagmeester.co.za> wrote: > Hello all, > > Just a question, on Linux the output of top's memory usage looks like thi= s: > > Mem: =C2=A0 2075424k total, =C2=A01760848k used, =C2=A0 314576k free, =C2= =A0 151872k buffers > Swap: =C2=A04192924k total, =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A00k used, =C2=A0419= 2924k free, =C2=A01214052k cached > > > on FreeBSD: > > Mem: 48M Active, 945M Inact, 190M Wired, 112M Buf, 804M Free > Swap: 4063M Total, 4063M Free > > > I have looked at the respective man pages, and googled. > Where can I find out what Active, Inactive, and Wired mean? > The differences have to do with the way memory is managed. Active memory is currently is RAM and is being used by a currently running process. Inactive is in RAM but is not currently being used. Wired means that the page is locked into ram and won't be paged out. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory for more info --=20 Eitan Adler
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