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Date:      07 Feb 2003 21:30:56 +0000
From:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9?= Ramos <andre.ramos@netcabo.pt>
To:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: What are these different memory figures in TOP?
Message-ID:  <1044653453.6635.53.camel@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <E5CC508A-3AE2-11D7-8120-000A27E2A402@mail.dionysia.org>
References:  <E5CC508A-3AE2-11D7-8120-000A27E2A402@mail.dionysia.org>

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On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 21:27, Dan Delaney wrote:
> 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

Active is the memory that is actually beeing used by the user's programs
and those program's data.
The buffer contains data recently loaded from the disk.
Inactive and Cache are both used as cache memory for programs and
program's data that are no longer running.
Wired memory is the memory that's beeing used by the kernel.
Free memory is exactly what it means.



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