From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 2 18:09:57 2008 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 960BF1065687 for ; Thu, 2 Oct 2008 18:09:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from josh.carroll@gmail.com) Received: from mail-gx0-f21.google.com (mail-gx0-f21.google.com [209.85.217.21]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 452458FC25 for ; Thu, 2 Oct 2008 18:09:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from josh.carroll@gmail.com) Received: by gxk14 with SMTP id 14so1693551gxk.19 for ; Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:09:56 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:reply-to :to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; bh=+FV8WzDbDCkAWj5XMU8JUFRfvNdSaqSqGT3JfxxavyY=; b=Gz4P4bT6lwHxBbb46LNIHrxMqacAZI4jgkK067cDOFocEJw1t4fL3Fvnnr4ilvlDjg 89YFwur6a3DW8qy+RCLk+kcwow3V09kBQfOsRo7fHn1aLiMv3vBnvAHxieVDEC9hilYh MS4Wa9uI4TF59vvpezTUQnSiAOQrhvNnMoZRg= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to :mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding :content-disposition:references; b=ZK84nVz0nybZOAI8YS0rpGqt1ZPH8n46Zvz/18oj8E3Id1kVJQyBELKlE70TmuCg3N h/nT3eR0r/2NTaShAtdWzfCsNlXegPraPxM9S7sIdnN8R5cIQjQV8PoSvXvAJUeUFye/ cBsvEcIUKkO384isLEC4HARLEJ7fYnuIvwpc4= Received: by 10.151.142.2 with SMTP id u2mr172689ybn.141.1222970996417; Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:09:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.151.11.21 with HTTP; Thu, 2 Oct 2008 11:09:56 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <8cb6106e0810021109m7a82d3d3j7e29f9e0ba406e13@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 14:09:56 -0400 From: "Josh Carroll" To: "Bill Moran" In-Reply-To: <20081002131435.efa1d07f.wmoran@potentialtech.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <200810020958.54563.kirk@strauser.com> <200810021004.56210.kirk@strauser.com> <20081002131435.efa1d07f.wmoran@potentialtech.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: More RAM for buffers? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: josh.carroll@gmail.com List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:09:57 -0000 > inactive, cache, and buffer are all different types of "buffer". That is my understanding as well. > I'm fairly sure that inactive is memory used by program code. When the > program terminates, the memory is marked as inactive, which means the > next time the program starts the code can simply be moved back to > active and the program need not be reloaded from disk. I think non-program code can also be "inactive". For example, top memory output before: Mem: 337M Active, 1455M Inact, 407M Wired, 352K Cache, 214M Buf, 1745M Free and after: find /usr/src -type f -print0 | xargs -0 cat > /dev/null 2>&1 Mem: 348M Active, 1905M Inact, 402M Wired, 912K Cache, 214M Buf, 1288M Free I am also not sure exactly what constitutes each of these. I only know what the top man page says. And for Buf it says: Buf: number of pages used for BIO-level disk caching I'm not entirely sure what "BIO-level disk caching" is, but it is apparently NOT the caching of filesystem data. Josh