From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 8 11:06:20 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 2A39B16A4CE for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 11:06:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.44]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE19743D39 for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 11:06:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin07-en2 [10.13.10.152]) by smtpout.mac.com (8.12.6/MantshX 2.0) with ESMTP id i38I6K7j023217; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 11:06:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.1.1.193] (nfw2.codefab.com [199.103.21.225] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0)i38I6IIR021661; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 11:06:19 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4075468C.4070603@msu.edu> References: <4075468C.4070603@msu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v613) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: <6C417830-8987-11D8-88D0-003065ABFD92@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Charles Swiger Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 14:06:13 -0400 To: Micah Bushouse X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.613) cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 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 18:06:20 -0000 On Apr 8, 2004, at 8:33 AM, Micah Bushouse wrote: > 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? The system still has the contents of your old programs kept in memory, but marked as "inactive". If you start running one of those programs again, the system will reuse pages of inactive memory where possible, rather than reading everything from disk again. -- -Chuck