From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Feb 7 13:27:13 2003 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 9471737B401 for ; Fri, 7 Feb 2003 13:27:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from LOUEX1.powercreative.com (louex1.powercreative.com [216.26.166.74]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7A8D43FCB for ; Fri, 7 Feb 2003 13:27:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dionysos@mail.dionysia.org) Received: from mail.dionysia.org ([172.16.3.7]) by LOUEX1.powercreative.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5329); Fri, 7 Feb 2003 16:27:23 -0500 Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 16:27:02 -0500 Subject: What are these different memory figures in TOP? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v551) From: Dan Delaney To: questions@freebsd.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <20030207210311.66543.qmail@web12808.mail.yahoo.com> Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.551) X-OriginalArrivalTime: 07 Feb 2003 21:27:23.0148 (UTC) FILETIME=[B3F504C0:01C2CEEF] Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello all. Is there a full explanation somewhere of what EXACTLY those six memory usage figures mean that are displayed in 'top'? You know the ones: Active, Inact, Wired, Cache, Buf, Free. The man page for top doesn't explain them at all. What exactly is the difference between "active" and "wired"? Between "cached" and "buffered"? How do you read those values to determine whether you need more RAM? Thanks. --Dan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message