From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 9 13:47:20 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 42A4316A4BF for ; Tue, 9 Sep 2003 13:47:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from main.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.224.249]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F77A43FE5 for ; Tue, 9 Sep 2003 13:47:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@m.gmane.org) Received: from list by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19wpOk-0005jm-00 for ; Tue, 09 Sep 2003 22:47:38 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from sea.gmane.org ([80.91.224.252]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19wpOj-0005je-00 for ; Tue, 09 Sep 2003 22:47:37 +0200 Received: from news by sea.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19wpOP-00021G-00 for ; Tue, 09 Sep 2003 22:47:17 +0200 From: Jesse Guardiani Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 16:47:16 -0400 Organization: WingNET Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: <33CC6198-E2E7-11D7-A4CA-003065ABFD92@mac.com> <20030909173825.GT48339@dan.emsphone.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org User-Agent: KNode/0.7.2 X-Mail-Copies-To: never Sender: news Subject: Re: howto calculate free memory from top X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: jesse@wingnet.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 20:47:20 -0000 Dan Nelson wrote: > In the last episode (Sep 09), Jesse Guardiani said: >> Charles Swiger wrote: >> > On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 08:35 AM, Jesse Guardiani wrote: >> >> How do I calculate the amount of free memory my system has at any >> >> given point in time? >> > >> > What do you mean by "free memory"? >> >> Memory that can be used by other programs before the vm starts using >> swap. > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/admin.html#TOP-MEMORY-STATES > does a pretty good job of explaining the states. Yes, all except Buf, but `man top` explains that pretty well. > >> So they _are_ available for use then? And thus are relatively free, >> correct? > > All memory except for Wired is "free", to varying degrees. OK. Just out of curiosity, what would you say about my example then: ------ Mem: 72M Active, 668M Inact, 165M Wired, 29M Cache, 112M Buf, 70M Free Swap: 2048M Total, 5448K Used, 2043M Free ------ Based on that FAQ, I would say that I've got about 80M of immediately available memory, and if the system gets pushed really hard, I can probably spare another 600M or so with relatively minimal swap usage. Is that accurate? Thanks! Sincerely, -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net