From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Aug 25 18:52:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id SAA27491 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 25 Aug 1997 18:52:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from srv.net (snake.srv.net [199.104.81.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id SAA27466 for ; Mon, 25 Aug 1997 18:51:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from darkstar.home (pmif171.ida.net [204.228.203.171]) by srv.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA10239; Mon, 25 Aug 1997 19:51:47 -0600 (MDT) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 18:51:13 -0700 (MST) From: Charles Mott X-Sender: cmott@darkstar.home To: "John S. Dyson" cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Slowly declining memory In-Reply-To: <199708260125.UAA01683@dyson.iquest.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 25 Aug 1997, John S. Dyson wrote: > pcoyne@br-inc.com said: > > Given a relatively static machine (i.e. runs DNS only) why does > > 'free' memory slowly but surely reduce (in top) day after day? > > > > e.g in a week, on a 64MB machine, go from 49MB to 25MB free memory in top > > display. > > > > Where is it going on / is it a problem? > > > > Thanks, > > > The system is aggressive about caching the filedata and .text+.data, and > if there isn't other, more important competing need, the system will just > keep on remembering more and more data. It is not a problem, but simply > using all of available memory if it can. > Is there any preference for caching in real memory versus the swap file? Would there still be an advantage to cache that is shifted to swap? Just curious how things work. Charles Mott