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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
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References: <396A79E9.F3AD3D1@home.com> <20000713011414.B11472@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <20000713213435.M48641@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk>
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In-Reply-To: <20000713213435.M48641@strontium.scientia.demon.co.uk>; from ben@FreeBSD.org on Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 09:34:35PM +0100
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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


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