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Date:      Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:00:40 +0200
From:      Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
To:        "TFC WLAN 97/98 - IST - ext.2269 (8418269)" <wlan@feldspato.ist.utl.pt>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Inactive memory 
Message-ID:  <28727.939204040@axl.noc.iafrica.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Oct 1999 10:48:31 %2B0100." <Pine.LNX.4.05.9910061039020.1504-100000@feldspato.ist.utl.pt> 

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On Wed, 06 Oct 1999 10:48:31 +0100, "TFC WLAN 97/98 - IST - ext.2269 (8418269)"
 wrote:

> I have 512MB of RAM but a significant part (300MB) is only
> reported as free for a few hours after a reboot,
> then it becomes "inactive".

That's a good thing. Inactive pages are those which back objects that
used to be referenced by some program but have since been "freed" up.
Instead of being marked "free", they're marked "inactive". This is part
of the VM system's caching technique. If some process now requires a new
reference to those pages, they may not need to be filled from disk.

> I think that's why we have a slow system, specially with regard
> to Pine that takes for ever to close/open a large mailbox, because it
> spends a lot of time allocating memory (during that time the systems
> becomes very slow)...

No, this isn't why you have a slow system. Pine just sucks at handling
large mailboxes. :-)

Later,
Sheldon.


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