From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jun 29 11:25:24 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from po3.wam.umd.edu (po3.wam.umd.edu [128.8.10.165]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2210C37BEE5 for ; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 11:25:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from culverk@wam.umd.edu) Received: from rac10.wam.umd.edu (root@rac10.wam.umd.edu [128.8.10.150]) by po3.wam.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA06658; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 14:25:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: from rac10.wam.umd.edu (sendmail@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rac10.wam.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id OAA15926; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 14:25:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (culverk@localhost) by rac10.wam.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA15912; Thu, 29 Jun 2000 14:25:10 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: rac10.wam.umd.edu: culverk owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 14:25:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Kenneth Wayne Culver To: Paul Herman 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 Hope I wasn't too mean :-) hehe... I think actually that we are covering the vm system (at least in 2.2.5, kinda old, but I'm sure that knowing 2.2.x's system, I could bring my self up to date on -CURRENT's vm system) pretty soon in this class. I can't wait :-) ================================================================= | Kenneth Culver | FreeBSD: The best NT upgrade | | Unix Systems Administrator | ICQ #: 24767726 | | and student at The | AIM: muythaibxr | | The University of Maryland, | Website: (Under Construction) | | College Park. | http://www.wam.umd.edu/~culverk/| ================================================================= On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Paul Herman wrote: > 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