[PLUG] Re: Question on the "top" command

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Mike" == Mike Witt <mike at computer-arts.net> writes:

Mike> What I *think* I'm understanding from the responses so far is
Mike> that the top "free" number doesn't really have anything to do
Mike> with how much memory is available to be allocated by a process,
Mike> but rather how much memory has never yet been "touched" for any
Mike> reason.

What "free" means is that it is "free", i.e., not used for anything.
What cache and buffer mean is that is still has stuff in it (such as
recently written data, etc) which might happen to become useful in the
future and which is orders of magnitude cheaper to fetch from an
existing memory block than from disk again.  Should the kernel need
memory, for something like launching another task, then it can grab
some of those memory blocks for the purpose.  So, just try to remember
that "free memory is wasted memory".


-- 
Russell Senior         ``The two chiefs turned to each other.        
seniorr at aracnet.com      Bellison uncorked a flood of horrible       
                         profanity, which, translated meant, `This is
                         extremely unusual.' ''