From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 5 06:29:13 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D307837B401 for ; Mon, 5 May 2003 06:29:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bluhayz.homeunix.org (ip68-106-103-50.nv.nv.cox.net [68.106.103.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E660443FAF for ; Mon, 5 May 2003 06:29:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dero@bluhayz.homeunix.org) Received: from bluhayz.homeunix.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) h45DUUbG001595 for ; Mon, 5 May 2003 09:30:31 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from dero@bluhayz.homeunix.org) Received: (from nobody@localhost) by bluhayz.homeunix.org (8.12.8p1/8.12.8/Submit) id h45DUUlq001594; Mon, 5 May 2003 09:30:30 -0400 (EDT) From: agent dero X-Authentication-Warning: bluhayz.homeunix.org: nobody set sender to dero@bluhayz.homeunix.org using -f Received: from 172.182.185.39 (SquirrelMail authenticated user dero) by bluhayz.homeunix.org with HTTP; Mon, 5 May 2003 09:30:30 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3801.172.182.185.39.1052141430.squirrel@bluhayz.homeunix.org> Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 09:30:30 -0400 (EDT) To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 X-Priority: 3 Importance: Normal Subject: Real and availible RAM X-BeenThere: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Performance/tuning List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 13:29:14 -0000 I have been looking through the kernel boot messages in /var/log while working on some custom kernel compile work, and I came across something that I think is very interesting, but doesn't make sense. real memory = 100663296 (98304K bytes) avail memory = 94580736 (92364K bytes) This tells me that FreeBSD recognizes my 98MB of RAM, but it only uses 92MB? Are the 6MB of RAM that are left getting shafted, and just using power, but not being addressed by FreeBSD? Does this slow down my machine at all, I mean, is there a percentage to this? Where only x% of 100% RAM is availible or usable? Also, I use phpSysInfo to judge the status of most of my remote servers, and it shows the caches and buffers as part of the whole chunk of used RAM, so at one point it can be up to 95% of the RAM. But then 10 minutes later it will have dropped back down to 50% or so, showing that the buffers were somehow cleared? Is there anyway to do this manually?