From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 18 6:44:45 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from serenity.mcc.ac.uk (serenity.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.93]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24B7615347 for ; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 06:44:40 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Received: from dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org ([130.88.200.97]) by serenity.mcc.ac.uk with smtp (Exim 1.92 #3) id 11oSnf-0006Lb-00; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 14:44:39 +0000 Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 14:44:39 +0000 (GMT) From: Jonathon McKitrick To: Lowell Gilbert Cc: Mojahedul Hoque Abul Hasanat , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Memory Info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I've seen a lot about this lately, and I've heard it said that 'free memory is wasted memory'. If this is the case, does this mean FreeBSD keeps everything possible in memory and then swaps out to VM when it needs more? How are unnecessary page faults and disk accesses avoided with this method? I am a bit of a neophyte, but I am right in the middle of an 'Intro to Operating Systems' course, and we just finished memory mgmt and virtual memory. On 18 Nov 1999, Lowell Gilbert wrote: >mojahed@citechco.net (Mojahedul Hoque Abul Hasanat) writes: > >> What is the command to show physical memory usage? I used >> vmstat, but its avm and fre fields are not what I want. I want >> an equivalent to Linux's "free" -- if possible. > >This has been asked several times in the last week or so; I have no >idea why this is popping up all of a sudden. The answer is no, it's >not possible. FreeBSD's virtual memory system tries to keep nearly >all of the memory in use, all of the time. > >Try the memory-use fields of top(1); that's the closest thing to what >you want. > >[If former Linux users really want this so badly, maybe we should link >FreeBSD's "free" to "top" or something like that. The part that >annoys me is that while "free" memory -- in the Linux command's sense >-- is an ambiguous concept on FreeBSD, it isn't *really* that clear on >Linux either.] > >Be well. > > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > -jonathon To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message