Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 19:16:54 +0200 (CEST) From: Paul Herman <pherman@frenchfries.net> To: Kenneth Wayne Culver <culverk@wam.umd.edu> Cc: Sam Xie <sam@samxie.cl.msu.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: memory leak? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006291901380.828-100000@bagabeedaboo.security.at12.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0006291210440.9768-100000@rac10.wam.umd.edu>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Kenneth Wayne Culver wrote: > > > Well, I know for sure that netscape leaks memory, but not that > > > much, for most purposes though, the "inactive" memory is free for > > > use by other programs, it's just being kept as inactive because > > > some program stored in that memory that has exited might be run > > > [...] > > > > I think you are thinking about "cache" memory. As far as I understand > > it, "inactive" memory is just "active" memory that hasn't been used in > > 30 seconds i.e. dirty pages that are still associated with objects and > > cannot be reused until they are cleaned or freed (i.e. moved into > > either "cache" or "free".) At least, that's how I've understood it. > > > Hrmm, I don't know, One thing I do know however is that when wmmon and > other utilities that put guages on memory usage measure the usage, they > measure inactive memory as free... That'll teach me to open my mouth before looking at the code. :) You are right, inactive memory is free to use by other programs. However, only a small portion of the pages are usually clean for immediate use. As for the 30 seconds stuff, I don't know where the heck I read that.... (search, search...) Aha! The vmstat(8) manpage it talks about active memory being memory "belonging to processes which are running or have run in the last 20 seconds." So, I suppose in user land, there are conflicting definitions of what active memory is, but in kernel land, it is indeed as you say. -Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.21.0006291901380.828-100000>