Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 10:25:22 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> To: Ben Smithurst <ben@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FAQ addition Message-ID: <20000714102522.A61949@mithrandr.moria.org> In-Reply-To: <20000713213435.M48641@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk>; from ben@FreeBSD.org on Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 09:34:35PM %2B0100 References: <396A79E9.F3AD3D1@home.com> <20000713011414.B11472@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <20000713213435.M48641@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk>
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On Thu 2000-07-13 (21:34), Ben Smithurst wrote: > 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> > > <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. Oooh, another person foolish enough to attempt to rein in the FAQ. ;) Actually, that looks good. I'd prefer <literal> instead of <emphasis>. Also <application> instead of <command>. My (limited) understanding is when you're talking about a program or group of programs, it's <application>, and if you're talking about a somewhat specific command (like "rm -rf /"), it's <command>. You could just skip that, and use &man.top.1; *grin*. Nik, can you give me a refresher? (: Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner Sunesi Clinical Systems nbm@mithrandr.moria.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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