From owner-freebsd-doc  Thu Jul 13 13:35:54 2000
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Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 21:34:35 +0100
From: Ben Smithurst <ben@FreeBSD.org>
To: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>
Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org
Subject: FAQ addition
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Nik Clayton wrote:

>   4.  Read the -questions mailing list, and make sure that our FAQ is=20
>       actually answering questions that are frequently asked.

I'm intending to add something like this,

--- book.sgml   2000/07/11 21:36:22     1.70
+++ book.sgml   2000/07/13 20:32:50
@@ -8411,6 +8411,20 @@
 </answer></qandaentry>
=20
 <qandaentry><question>
+<para>Why does <command>top</command> show very little free memory when I
+have very few programs running?</para></question><answer>
+
+<para>The simple answer is that free memory is wasted memory.
+Any memory that your programs don't actively allocate is used
+within the FreeBSD kernel as disk cache.  The values shown by
+<command>top</command> labelled as <emphasis>Inact</emphasis>,
+<emphasis>Cache</emphasis>, and <emphasis>Buf</emphasis> are all
+cached data at different aging levels.  You actually want as little
+<emphasis>Free</emphasis> memory as possible.</para>
+
+</answer></qandaentry>
+
+<qandaentry><question>
 <para>        Why use (what are) a.out and ELF executable formats?
       </para></question><answer>

My only worry is that it's not detailed enough.  Perhaps I could search
the -questions archive to find other answers from the past and combine
bits from them all...  I'll look at that shortly.

--=20
Ben Smithurst                 / ben@FreeBSD.org / PGP: 0x99392F7D
FreeBSD Documentation Project /

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