Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 18:07:31 +0200 (CEST) From: Paul Herman <pherman@frenchfries.net> To: Kenneth Wayne Culver <culverk@wam.umd.edu> Cc: Sam Xie <sam@samxie.cl.msu.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: memory leak? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006291800270.828-100000@bagabeedaboo.security.at12.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0006291036270.9768-100000@rac10.wam.umd.edu>
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On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Kenneth Wayne Culver wrote: > Well, I know for sure that netscape leaks memory, but not that > much, for most purposes though, the "inactive" memory is free for > use by other programs, it's just being kept as inactive because > some program stored in that memory that has exited might be run > again, and it's faster to run from inactive memory than disk if it > hasn't been used for anything else... I think my explanation is > WAY simplified, but I think I got it basically right. I think you are thinking about "cache" memory. As far as I understand it, "inactive" memory is just "active" memory that hasn't been used in 30 seconds i.e. dirty pages that are still associated with objects and cannot be reused until they are cleaned or freed (i.e. moved into either "cache" or "free".) At least, that's how I've understood it. As far as tracking down memory leaks (original post), I would first reboot the machine, take a "ps aux", and then the next day another "ps aux" and see what has changed. You are sure to find something. -Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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