From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Wed Jan 28 13:26:08 2004
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
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 E98B416A4CE
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>;
	Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:26:08 -0800 (PST)
Received: from fielden.com.au (www.fielden.com.au [203.34.58.131])
	by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 67AF843D31
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>;
	Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:26:06 -0800 (PST)
	(envelope-from david@fielden.com.au)
Received: (qmail 5435 invoked from network); 28 Jan 2004 21:26:01 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO fielden.com.au) (192.168.1.84)
  by persephone.fielden.com.au with SMTP; 28 Jan 2004 21:26:01 -0000
Message-ID: <401828E8.5090907@fielden.com.au>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:26:00 +1100
From: Rowdy <david@fielden.com.au>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
	rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031205 Thunderbird/0.4
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
References: <401823B2.7050400@fielden.com.au>
	<20040128211153.GA40209@wopr.caltech.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20040128211153.GA40209@wopr.caltech.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: showing total/free memory
X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1
Precedence: list
List-Id: User questions <freebsd-questions.freebsd.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions>,
	<mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions>
List-Post: <mailto:freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
List-Help: <mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions>,
	<mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 21:26:09 -0000

Matthew Hunt wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 08:03:46AM +1100, Rowdy wrote:
> 
> 
>>I am setting up MRTG and at the moment I am parsing /var/run/dmesg.boot 
>>and the output from `top -b -d 1` to get total and free memory 
>>respectively, but I hope there is an easier way.
> 
> 
> Try "vmstat" instead.
> 

Thought of that.  According to the man page, vmstat shows, for memory:

avm     active virtual pages
fre     size of the free list

Does the size of the free list correspond to actual free memory?  I 
wasn't sure whether that was the case or not.

Also, it's a case of parsing the output from top or parsing the output 
from vmstat - I had hoped there would be a simple command that would 
show memory state :)

Dave