From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 16 18:18:18 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC0F8106564A for ; Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:18:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from mail6.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail6.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.8]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8180C8FC14 for ; Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:18:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: (qmail 3814 invoked from network); 16 Jan 2009 18:18:18 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail6.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 16 Jan 2009 18:18:17 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id D882A50824; Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:18:16 -0500 (EST) To: Tim Kellers References: <4970C565.1000304@njit.edu> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:18:16 -0500 In-Reply-To: <4970C565.1000304@njit.edu> (Tim Kellers's message of "Fri\, 16 Jan 2009 12\:35\:33 -0500") Message-ID: <44fxjjcdxz.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: RAM/Memory resources on 7 STABLE X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:18:19 -0000 Tim Kellers writes: > My Machine: Dell 2850 PE w/ 12 GB of Ram > > www# uname -a > FreeBSD www 7.1-STABLE FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE #2: Tue Jan 6 19:24:57 EST 2009 root@www:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/DELL64 amd64 > > When I boot this machine it usually shows (in top) about 11 G Free in the Mem: line > > The machine, in this snippet, has been up for 5 days 22 hours and change and it now shows 1436M free in the Mem: line > I've been watching the number and it has been slowly decreasing over the 5 days since its last boot. It looks like as the Free line trends down, the Inact value trends up to keep the total Mem used at the installed 12G > > I've never noticed this (the slow decline of Free) before on any machine I've had. Maybe that just means it has happened and I haven't noticed it, but I don't know. > > Is anyone familiar with this or if it means trouble or what might be the cause? > > Thanks > > Tim > > > > last pid: 67240; load averages: 0.16, 0.14, 0.10 up 5+22:44:26 12:32:54 > 109 processes: 1 running, 107 sleeping, 1 zombie > CPU 0: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 1.5% system, 0.0% interrupt, 98.5% idle > CPU 1: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 1.1% system, 0.0% interrupt, 98.9% idle > CPU 2: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 1.1% system, 0.8% interrupt, 98.1% idle > CPU 3: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 100% idle > Mem: 383M Active, 9507M Inact, 424M Wired, 129M Cache, 214M Buf, 1447M Free > Swap: 2014M Total, 2014M Free See the FreeBSD FAQ entry titled "Why does top show very little free memory even when I have very few programs running?". -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/