From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jun 29 10:17:39 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail2.netcologne.de (mail2.netcologne.de [194.8.194.103]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F9EB37B765 for ; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 10:17:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from pherman@frenchfries.net) Received: from bagabeedaboo.security.at12.de (dial-195-14-244-170.netcologne.de [195.14.244.170]) by mail2.netcologne.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA10626; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 19:17:06 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from localhost (localhost.security.at12.de [127.0.0.1]) by bagabeedaboo.security.at12.de (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id e5THGtH13122; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 19:16:56 +0200 (CEST) Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 19:16:54 +0200 (CEST) From: Paul Herman To: Kenneth Wayne Culver Cc: Sam Xie , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: memory leak? 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 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 > > > [...] > > > > 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. > > > Hrmm, I don't know, One thing I do know however is that when wmmon and > other utilities that put guages on memory usage measure the usage, they > measure inactive memory as free... That'll teach me to open my mouth before looking at the code. :) You are right, inactive memory is free to use by other programs. However, only a small portion of the pages are usually clean for immediate use. As for the 30 seconds stuff, I don't know where the heck I read that.... (search, search...) Aha! The vmstat(8) manpage it talks about active memory being memory "belonging to processes which are running or have run in the last 20 seconds." So, I suppose in user land, there are conflicting definitions of what active memory is, but in kernel land, it is indeed as you say. -Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message