From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 31 07:24:48 2010 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 69DB5106564A for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 07:24:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lists@eitanadler.com) Received: from mail-gw0-f54.google.com (mail-gw0-f54.google.com [74.125.83.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3491B8FC17 for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 07:24:47 +0000 (UTC) Received: by gwj23 with SMTP id 23so2693103gwj.13 for ; Mon, 31 May 2010 00:24:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.231.79.74 with SMTP id o10mr5315469ibk.36.1275290687342; Mon, 31 May 2010 00:24:47 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.231.148.201 with HTTP; Mon, 31 May 2010 00:24:27 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4BFE40CF.8020203@waagmeester.co.za> References: <4BFE40CF.8020203@waagmeester.co.za> From: Eitan Adler Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 10:24:27 +0300 Message-ID: To: Coert Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: FreeBSD questions Subject: Re: top memory usage question X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 07:24:48 -0000 On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Coert wrote: > Hello all, > > Just a question, on Linux the output of top's memory usage looks like thi= s: > > Mem: =C2=A0 2075424k total, =C2=A01760848k used, =C2=A0 314576k free, =C2= =A0 151872k buffers > Swap: =C2=A04192924k total, =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A00k used, =C2=A0419= 2924k free, =C2=A01214052k cached > > > on FreeBSD: > > Mem: 48M Active, 945M Inact, 190M Wired, 112M Buf, 804M Free > Swap: 4063M Total, 4063M Free > > > I have looked at the respective man pages, and googled. > Where can I find out what Active, Inactive, and Wired mean? > The differences have to do with the way memory is managed. Active memory is currently is RAM and is being used by a currently running process. Inactive is in RAM but is not currently being used. Wired means that the page is locked into ram and won't be paged out. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory for more info --=20 Eitan Adler