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From: Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org>
To: Steve 1 <ukla@attbi.com>
Subject: Re: Inactive Memory Creep
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 18:50:40 -0500
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In active memory is "freeable" memory that FreeBSD keeps around "just in 
case" it might be able to save it from having to reallocate it.  Basically 
it's stuff that that's memory-mapped read-only and not currently used.  But 
instead of fully freeing, FreeBSD figures its more efficient to keep it 
around on a list.  It's the same as free memory for all practical purposes, 
in that if there's no "free" memory, the inactive memory is used before 
resorting to stealing buffers or using virtual memory.

On Wednesday 20 March 2002 04:13 pm, you wrote:
| Hey All,
|
| I have an odd problem that I cannot figure out.
|
| Running top shows the inactive memory on my machine creeps steadily
| upwards.
|
| Currently up 7 days
|
| Mem: 26M Active, 545M Inact, 56M Wired, 4K Cache, 112M Buf, 376M Free
| Swap: 1028M Total, 1028M Free
|
| Luckily I have a machine with a gig of ram so I have plenty of headroom. I
| run almost no services (BSD-AMP) on the machine so I am puzzled as to what
| is using the space and not giving it up, or is this an OS thing?
|
| Suggestions?
|
|
| Steve
|
|
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-- 
Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . .   bts@wnt.sas.com (work)
Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . .   bts@babbleon.org (personal)
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