top memory usage question

[RW]

On Thu, 27 May 2010 11:52:15 +0200
Coert <lgroups at waagmeester.co.za> wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> Just a question, on Linux the output of top's memory usage looks like
> this:
> 
> Mem:   2075424k total,  1760848k used,   314576k free,   151872k
> buffers Swap:  4192924k total,        0k used,  4192924k free,
> 1214052k cached
> 
> 
> on FreeBSD:
> 
> Mem: 48M Active, 945M Inact, 190M Wired, 112M Buf, 804M Free
> Swap: 4063M Total, 4063M Free

This is missing Cache

> I have looked at the respective man pages, and googled.
> Where can I find out what Active, Inactive, and Wired mean?


Active, Inact, Cache , and Free are all part of the same VM lifecycle.
When the system need to allocate memory it comes from cache or free.

Wired memory wont be paged-out.