From owner-freebsd-doc Fri Jul 14 6:57: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from scientia.demon.co.uk (scientia.demon.co.uk [212.228.14.13]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 788DA37C771; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 06:56:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ben@scientia.demon.co.uk) Received: from strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk ([192.168.91.36] ident=exim) by scientia.demon.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.15 #1) id 13D5HF-000434-00; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 14:13:13 +0100 Received: (from ben) by strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk (Exim 3.15 #1) id 13D5HF-0009Bk-00; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 14:13:13 +0100 Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 14:13:13 +0100 From: Ben Smithurst To: John Baldwin Cc: Neil Blakey-Milner , freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG, Nik Clayton Subject: Re: FAQ addition Message-ID: <20000714141313.O48641@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk> References: <20000714102522.A61949@mithrandr.moria.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-md5; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="dT+85zccSFkyJC53" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org --dT+85zccSFkyJC53 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable John Baldwin wrote: > This actually is not quite true. You don't want 0 free memory. :) > A better way to phrase this might be to explain that the cached data > allows the system to use up available free memory to remember things > that it has recently used allowing it to avoid having to use the > slow disk as often, and thus increasing performance. Free memory is > the memory left over after the caching. Or something along those > lines. ok, is something like this better? The simple answer is that free memory is wasted memory. Any memory that your programs don't actively allocate is used within the FreeBSD kernel as disk cache. The values shown by &man.top.1; labelled as Inact, Cache, and Buf are all cached data at different aging levels. This cached data means the system does not have to=20 access a slow disk again for data it has accessed recently, thus=20 increasing overall performance. In general, a low value shown for Free memory in &man.top.1; is good, provided it is not very low. --=20 Ben Smithurst / ben@FreeBSD.org / PGP: 0x99392F7D FreeBSD Documentation Project / --dT+85zccSFkyJC53 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use MessageID: 3uMnrlDONxbpu80+yyaMQDDbVaKKdyd9 iQCVAwUBOW8R6CsPVtiZOS99AQFbLgP/SbUyPMQsCIQm7dxp4XZhzr4bVGKwSX0i qQTjEXdUX34jx3q4Ff8nBM4CN1om5JeMpOCCwS6ON+1ox6+n9UVotTawsJEwxr+P EzD/MTlOvU/LqEcQnLsc3bn+Oz7xxMmReahX6rv9+mVlDlEazgojNgka/T65A5G+ 9hzt8g6SVEA= =6LIx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --dT+85zccSFkyJC53-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message