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Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:58:43 -0800
From: Chris Pressey <cpressey@catseye.mine.nu>
To: Rowdy <david@fielden.com.au>
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Subject: Re: showing total/free memory
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On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:26:00 +1100
Rowdy <david@fielden.com.au> wrote:

> 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

Well, I'm not sure if it works on 5.x, but you could try

  /usr/ports/sysutils/muse

Should be easier to parse than the other options.

-Chris