From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 8 05:33:34 2004 Return-Path: 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 4336416A4CE for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 05:33:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sys11.mail.msu.edu (sys11.mail.msu.edu [35.9.75.111]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 003B243D31 for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 05:33:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bushous2@msu.edu) Received: from [198.70.64.5] (helo=msu.edu) by sys11.mail.msu.edu with asmtp (Exim 4.24 #37) (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) id 1BBYir-0007yO-6f for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:33:33 -0400 Message-ID: <4075468C.4070603@msu.edu> Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:33:16 -0400 From: Micah Bushouse User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (X11/20040324) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus: None found by Clam AV Subject: Inact v. Free Memory X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 12:33:34 -0000 I have a quick question regarding the differences between Inactive and Free memory. Context: I'm running 4.9 stable as a desktop machine. Right after a fresh reboot most of the system memory shows up as Free (using top). Then, after a few hours of work... running X, web browsers, and the like, most appears in Inact. My question is... after I shut down all programs, ctrl alt backspace X, and get back to a terminal, why does top still show all the memory just freed by my desktop programs as inactive? Please see my attached top_output.txt. You'll notice that after adding up all the memory in the programs that are still running, the total doesn't come close to reaching 308M Inact. Thanks, Micah